Psychological
Commentaries
on the Teaching of
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky
Maurice Nicoll
Volume 3
CONTENTS
Quaremead, Ugley, 1945
22.9.45
29. 9.45
6.10.45
13.10.45
10.10.45
27.10.45
3.11.45
17.11.45
24.11.45
1.12.45
8.12.45
22.12.45
29.12.45
The Second Line of Work.........................................
Commentary on Making Decisions in the Work ...
Commentary on the Application of the Work-Ideas
to Oneself
...................................................
Commentary on the Observation of One's Psychology
A Note on the Law of Fate........................................
The Observation of 'I's and States
................
A Note on Relaxation
...
...
...
...
Work on the Emotional Centre
............................
Work on Attitudes......................................................
Where We Live Psychologically ............................
On Obeying the Work
.......................................
The Parable of the Horse, Carriage and Driver (I)
The Parable of the Horse, Carriage and Driver (II)
PAGE
779
784
789
793
798
803
806
810
815
818
821
823
827
Quaremead, Ugley, 1946
12. 1.46
19. 1.46
26. 1.46
2. 2.46
9. 2.46
16. 2.46
22. 2.46
2. 3.46
9. 3.46
16. 3.46
23.3.46
3. 3.46
6. 4.46
13. 4.46
20. 4.46
27. 4.46
4.5.46
11. 5.46
18. 5.46
25. 5.46
1. 6.46
8.6.46
15. 6.46
22. 6.46
The Unobserved Side of Ourselves
.................
On putting Feeling of 'I' into the Work ...............
Note on the Effect of Early Impressions .................
On Keeping the Work Alive in Oneself ................
Commentary on one's Level of Being
...
...
Commentary on Giving up one's Suffering
...
The Psychological Meaning of Foot
.................
Commentary on being Sealed against Life
...
A Note on the Difficulties of Giving Out and Receiving
Esoteric Teaching
...
...
...
...
Further Note on Sealing oneself from Life.................
The Importance of Observing Mechanical Disliking
Commentary on Acceptance of Oneself ...
...
Further Note on Acceptance of Oneself .................
The Parable of Walking on the Waters ................
A Note on False Personality and Imaginary 'I' ...
Commentary on Attitudes..........................................
The Study of Mechanical Associations
................
Further Note on False Personality.............................
Commentary on Self-Remembering
.................
Commentary on Identifying
............................
Commentary on Memory...........................................
On Thinking in a New Way
............................
A Note on Relaxation
.......................................
Work on Emotional Centre........................................
831
837
839
840
845
850
856
861
864
868
871
874
876
879
882
886
890
892
896
899
902
905
908
910
PAGE
29.
6.
20.
27.
3.
10.
17.
8.
31.
6.46
7.46
7.46
7.46
8.46
8.46
8.46
8.46
8.46
Note on Self-Rcmembcring ...
...
...
...
Commentary on False Personality and Self-Love ...
Inner Separation
...
...
...
...
...
On Living more Consciously
...
...
...
A Short Note on Different Ways of Self-Remembering
A Note on Second Body
.......................................
On Awakening from Sleep.........................................
Further Note on Second Body
............................
Recapitulation on Essence and Personality
...
912
914
918
921
925
927
930
934
939
Great Amwell House, 1946
21. 9.46
28. 9.46
5.10.46
13.10.46
19.10.46
26.10.46
2.11.46
11.11.46
16.11.46
23.11.46
30.11.46
7.12.46
14.12.46
21.12.46
28.12.46
Further Note on Self-Remembering
...
...
Time-Body ...
...
...
...
...
...
Further Note on Time-Body
...
...
...
The Relation of Memory to the Fourth Dimension
A Note on Personal Work on Oneself
...
...
Essence and Personality
...
...
...
...
A Note on Buried Conscience
...
...
...
Inner Contradictions...
...
...
...
...
A Note on False Personality
...
...
...
Third Force ...
...
...
...
...
...
A Note on Effort ................. .................................
Efforts Against certain 'I's ...
...
...
...
Our Psychological Country.......................................
On Finding Solutions
...
...
...
...
Feeling of 'I' ..............................................................
941
943
947
950
953
955
958
963
966
968
971
974
977
979
982
Great Amwell House, 1947
4. 1.47
11. 1.47
18. 1.47
25. 1.47
1. 2.47
8. 2.47
15. 2.47
22. 2.47
1. 3.47
8. 3.47
22. 3.47
Positive Ideas in the Work (I)
...
...
Positive Ideas in the Work (II)
...
...
Further Note on Positive Ideas in the Work
Reversal of Signs
...
...
...
Magnetic Centre and Positive Ideas
...
Our Relationship to Psychological Space ...
A Note on Self-Justifying ...
...
...
Note on Taking in Negative Impressions ...
On Realizing that One is not Conscious ...
Work on Undeveloped Functions ...
...
Further Note on Undeveloped Functions ...
Personal Realization that one is a Machine
...
...
and
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
984
987
990
993
996
999
1000
1003
1006
1008
1010
PAGE
29. 3.47
5. 4.47
12. 4.47
19. 4.47
29. 4.47
3. 5.47
10.5.47
17. 5.47
25. 5.47
31. 5.47
7. 6.47
14. 6.47
21. 6.47
28. 6.47
5. 7.47
12. 7.47
19. 7.47
26. 7.47
6. 9.47
13. 9.47
20. 9.47
27. 9.47
4.10.47
11.10.47
25.10.47
1.11.47
8.11.47
15.11.47
29.11.47
6.12.47
13.12.47
20.12.47
Mechanics and Psychology ...
..
...
...
Neutralizing Force—Triads
...
...
...
Accident and Fate ...
...
...
...
...
On Psychological Thinking ...
...
...
...
Further Note on Psychological Thinking ...
...
A Note on External Considering ...
...
...
The Body and the Different Minds that Act on it (I)
The Body and the Different Minds that Acton it (II)
A Note on Understanding ...
...
...
...
On Violence and Understanding ...
...
...
On Centres and Parts of Centres ...
...
...
Further Note on Violence and Understanding,
(Violence and Fear) ...
...
...
...
Commentary on Psycho-Transformism
...
...
Intelligence and Instinct
...
...
...
...
A Note on Relationship
...
...
...
...
Aim ........................................................................
Further Talk on Essence and Personality ...
...
The Idea of Payment in the Work ...
...
...
Separation and Self-Remembering
...
...
The Inner Man
..................................................
Note on Self-Observation ...
...
...
...
Different 'I's...............................................................
Further Note on 'I's .................................................
The Work-Octave (I)
......................................
The Work-Octave (II)
......................................
The Work-Octave (III)
......................................
Personality and Essence or Outer and Inner Man
or (in my case) Nicoll and 'I' ...
...
...
On Hearing the Work
...
...
...
...
Centre of Gravity (Sun, Moon and Stars)
...
Commentary on Increase of Consciousness
...
Commentary on Aim
...
...
...
...
One of the Work-Ideas about Imagination
...
1013
1015
1017
1019
1022
1025
1028
1032
1034
1039
1041
1047
1049
1053
1055
1057
1059
1062
1064
1066
1068
1071
1072
1074
1078
1080
1083
1085
1088
1091
1095
1099
Great Amwell House, 1948
3.
10.
17.
24.
31.
7.
1.48
1.48
1.48
1.48
1.48
2.48
The Step-Diagram .....................................................
Notes on Self-Observation ...
...
...
...
6144.............................................................................
Essence and Personality
...
...
...
...
Internal Considering and Inner Talking ...
...
Commentary on Being
.......................................
1103
1106
1109
1112
1115
1120
PAGE
14.
21.
28.
6.
2.48
Commentary on Habits
...
...
...
... 1123
2.48
Commentary on Time
...................................... 1127
2.48
Commentary on Imaginary 'I' and False Personality 1132
3.48
Further Commentary on Self-Remembering
................. 1136
13. 3.48 Internal Considering
...................................... 1140
27. 3.48
A Note on External and Internal Attention
... 1141
3. 4.48
The Work Conception of Energy ...
...
... 1144
10. 4.48
The Food of Impressions ...
...
...
... 1149
17. 4.48
A Universal Language
...
...
...
... 1153
24. 4.48
Lying .......................................................................... 1158
1. 5.48
On Consciousness ...
...
...
...
... 1161
8. 5.48 Brief Note on Self-Change........................................ 1165
15. 5.48
Self-Change (Change of Attitude) ...
...
... 1167
22. 5.48
Note on Observation of Intellectual Centre and
Useless Thinking and Wrong Thinking
... 1169
29. 5.48
Notes on the Meaning of this Work
...
... 1173
5. 6.48
The Transformation of Impressions
...
... 1175
12. 6.48
Self-Transformation ...
...
...
...
... 1179
19. 6.48
Note on Self-Remembering and
Self-Acknowledgment 1183
26. 6.48 Wrong Work of Centres
....................................... 1185
3. 7.48
The Unmanifest Earth and the Manifest Earth ... 1188
10. 7.48
A Further Note on the Table of Hydrogens
... 1191
17. 7.48
The Unmanifest as Cause of the Manifest
... 1194
23. 7.48
Essence and Personality
...
...
...
... 1197
31. 7.48 Further Note on Work-Effort
........................... 1200
7. 8.48
Buffers, Pictures and Work-Shock ...
...
... 1203
21. 8.48
On Being under Different Laws ...
...
... 1205
28. 8.48
On Identifying with your Part in Life
...
... 1208
4. 9.48
Further Notes on Self-Observation
...
... 1210
11. 9.48
A Note on Violence................................................... 1213
18. 9.48 Further Note on Violence......................................... 1215
2.10.48 Crisis .......................................................................... 1218
9.10.48
Notes on Work on Oneself ...
...
...
... 1221
16.10.48
Evaluation ...
...
...
...
...
... 1224
Quaremead, Ugley, September 22, 1945
THE SECOND LINE OF WORK
There are three lines of Work. The first line of Work is work on
yourself in connection with what the Work teaches. The second line
of Work is work in conjunction with other people who are in this Work.
The third line of Work is work in relationship to what the Work is
aiming at.
Let us take the second line of Work, work in connection with other
people who are in the Work. Let me say to begin with that if you are
in a group of people who are studying this Work and you make no
endeavour to get to know them or to understand them, you are not
doing the second line of Work. No man can work on the first line only.
To work only for yourself would only increase your self-love, your selfvanity. As regards this working in conjunction with other people there
are many things said in the Work that are very useful to remember. It
is sometimes a matter of astonishment to me that people who have been
in the Work —or who imagine they have been in the Work—for many
years never make the slightest attempt to connect themselves with other
people except through their prejudices and buffers—that is, they
only wish to know people of whom they approve, people who have
the same buffers as they have. Such people make no progress in the
Work—that is, they do not change. There is a saying in the Work that
people whom you meet in groups and dislike at first are often those
people whom you like later on, but this change only takes place
through work on oneself and through evaluation of the Work, which
always leads to work on the third line of Work. When a number of
people meet together they eventually tend to quarrel. Unless the force
of the Work is behind a number of people who meet often together,
they will break up into different forms of antagonism. As mechanical
people, they are bound to quarrel. This is why it is said that life as a
Neutralizing Force always disunites people and makes them split up
into antagonistic cliques. But the Third Force that comes down
from a different channel altogether is a uniting force that can hold
people together if those people value the Work. And this discipline,
carried out through feeling the value of the Work, brings people
together in unusual ways and enlarges their life, and they begin to
form what is called an accumulator—that is, a group of people who
forego some of their mechanical reactions and begin to a certain
extent to obey the Work and thus transmit its influences. This is
a wonderful thing. And it is exactly in this wonder of the Work that
people begin to change and become healed internally. You must
understand that the Work is a healing force and that in many ways it
is contradictory to life and its influences—in fact, it is actually said
in the Work that the Work is against life—and you must understand
by this that the influence of the Work, the understanding of what
779
it means, goes against influences and values that come from life. You
have only to look round to-day, in this so-called time of peace, to
see how life disunites people and forms fresh quarrels, fresh antagonisms
in every direction. Then you will understand why it is said that life is
a disruptive force and that the Work is a uniting force.
In regard to the second line of Work which can be called making
relationships with other people, we have to remember that the Work
teaches us that we are mechanical. This is a deep saying, far more
deep in its meaning than any of us has realized. What does it mean
that a person is mechanical? It means that he or she always acts in
the only way in which he or she can act at any given moment. We
think that people do things intentionally but cannot see that people
do things mechanically. A person, for example, who tells a lie under
certain given circumstances, is not doing it deliberately but mechanically
—namely, his or her machine always at such a moment acts in this
way—that is, tells a lie. Naturally we hate to think that we are machines
in this sense. We have the illusion that we are always doing things
consciously, deliberately, intentionally. This is not the case. Whatever
we do, whatever we say, however we behave, whatever we think,
whatever we feel, is mechanical. G. once said: "You are all different
kinds of machines—some are typewriters, some are sewing-machines,
some are mincing-machines, and so on." This view of human nature
is unpleasant and yet it is true. There are many scientific theories
about Man being a machine. You pour in petrol and get certain
results. What interested me very much in the teaching of this Work was
the idea that from one point of view Man is a machine—that is, as long
as he does not try to wake up and work on himself. He need not be a
machine if he seeks to awaken from sleep and sleeping humanity.
This interested me because it was a reconciliation of scientific and
spiritual ideas about Man. Man is a machine, but he can become
something that is no longer a question of machinery, if he follows teaching coming from those who are not machines—that is, teaching coming
from the Conscious Circle of Humanity. The apparent paradox is
thus reconciled and becomes a harmonious thought instead of a
contradictory thought on the opposites. If you say: "Is so-and-so a
machine?" I will answer you: "To which man do you refer?" He may
be a mechanical man, or a man beginning to awaken, or even a Conscious
Man. If he is a mechanical man he is a machine. If he is a Conscious
Man he is not a machine because he has risen above his mechanicalness
and is on a higher level. As you know, the Work divides mankind into
seven categories. Three are mechanical—Nos. 1, 2 and 3 Man—No. 4
Man is transitional, and Nos. 5, 6 and 7 Man belong to the Conscious
Circle of Humanity and can no longer be called machines. But the
vast majority are mechanical, governed by external impressions.
Now in relating yourself to other people—that is, beginning to think
what the second line of Work means and to apply it—it is sometimes
said that you must begin with the idea that other people are machines.
780
But this is quite wrong and should never be said. What you have to
begin from is the idea that you yourself are a machine. Only through
self-observation carried out rightly can you begin to see your own
machine, your own mechanicalness. However, as we are we take
ourselves and other people as being fully conscious, as capable of
independent action, as not being ruled by past associations—in short,
as not being machines. So in consequence we blame people very much
for not behaving to us as we think they ought to behave and through
this we start trains of inner talking and negative emotions. Probably
you all know how we are always very disappointed in other people. We
expect our husbands and our wives, our sisters and cousins and aunts,
and our friends, to be quite different from what they are, and all this
lays down a kind of secret grievance in us, a form of Internal Considering, which cannot be cured unless we understand about mechanicalness. It is like a typewriter finding fault with a mincing-machine. It is
like complaining that a pair of gloves of a different size from your own
does not fit you. We have to start by seeing our own mechanicalness.
As you know, we all take ourselves for granted. And what does this
mean? It means that we take ourselves as being fully conscious, capable
of making every right adaptation to circumstances—in short, of having
no machine laid down in us at all. We are quite certain that we have
no fixed attitudes, ways of talking, no fixed tendencies, or even no
habits. We may admit to a few physical habits but I do not think that
anyone easily admits to having any emotional or mental habits. But
the Work teaches that we have habits in Intellectual and Emotional
Centres that are far more important than physical habits and far more
significant. People grow up as Anglicans, as Roman Catholics, as
Presbyterians, as Quakers, as Methodists, as Atheists, as Agnostics,
or even as scientists, and they are perfectly certain that their minds
and their emotions are quite free from mechanicalness—that is, that
they are open-minded. All this has eventually to be made conscious
and overcome so that a man begins to be universal in outlook and in
his feelings. But it cannot be overcome unless your self-observation is
keen and full of integrity, otherwise you will not shift from where you
are and you will remain a mechanical man or woman in life—that is,
you will not change—and so will not understand what the second
education means, the real University that you have to attend to become
healed, through External Considering.
So one of the first great ideas in this teaching in regard to our
relationship to other people is to realize first of all that we are mechanical
and that what we do and what they do is inevitable, being mechanically
determined. Many people think that they have reached this point of
view and take up a kind of resigned attitude to other people. This is
a pure fiction. It means that they have not seen their own mechanicalness, and so they get caught up in the great wheel of mechanical life,
thinking that they are conscious and yet being more and more
mechanical even than others. Now to regard yourself as mechanical
781
is extremely difficult and extremely painful but it will change your
whole relationship to other people. When you have realized that you
cannot help doing something, you will realize that other people cannot
help doing something and you will no longer feel this fatal criticism,
this contempt, that underlies so many people's psychology. This will
give you a right basis to begin to have relationship in the Work-sense
to other people. Do you remember this sketched-out first octave of the
Work which started from the note Do which was called 'evaluation of
the Work'? It is of course an ascending octave, so the next note is
Re, which was called 'application of the Work practically to yourself.'
The third note Mi was called 'realization of your own difficulties'.
Now a man who begins to realize his own difficulties in the Work will
no longer blame other people as he used to mechanically, because
everything you realize in yourself frees you from other people. I mean
that if you realize your own difficulties you will realize other people's
difficulties in proportion. The more you see in yourself the more you
see in other people. If you are blind to yourself you will never understand other people, and, as you know, one of the things we are seeking
in this Work is understanding which is said to be the most powerful
force that we can create in ourselves. The word 'create' is used in
regard to understanding. If you behave mechanically you will create
nothing because mechanicalness creates nothing. It is only if you
begin to be more conscious that you begin to understand this difficult
word 'creation'. And for full understanding, we must practise all three
lines of this Work and we must get to know ourselves far more deeply
than we used to. But unless there is the third line of Work as well, the
first two lines of Work will peter out after a time. This is natural enough
because how can you expect this Work to continue to maintain its
force unless you attend to the third line, to the aim of the Work, to
what the Work itself is trying to do at the moment. You must remember
that the third line of Work is getting into contact with the Third Force,
the Neutralizing Force, of the Work, and it is exactly this that prevents
the Third Force of life from interfering with it and bringing it down to
zero in the Emotional Centre so that the Work loses all its force for you.
Now when you seek to make relationship with someone else, you
have to create the person by seeing him or her distinctly. Most people
have fixed ideas, not only about the kind of persons they like, but about
what people are like. These ideas are practically always wrong and
are seen to be so eventually in the Work. They are probably based on
what we have been taught or have read about in novels. YOU cannot
take a person simply as your opinion of him or her. Nor can you take
a person merely as what he is in life or is reputed to be. To make
relationship with a person you have to see the person differently from
the way you would see him or her in life. If you have never undermined yourself and your own opinion of yourself you will never be able
to do this. You will simply accept people at their face value and you will
only wish to know people who have the same buffers and the same
782
attitudes as you have, as I said before. So you will never move, you
will never shift, from where you are—that is, you will never change.
But the Work is about self-change.
The second point that I would like to speak about to-night in regard
to relationships towards others is that not only are other people machines
as you are yourself, but they are not one person. Another person is
many different persons, nice and unpleasant, intelligent and stupid.
To take another person as one unvarying 'I' does him or her great harm.
But again the real question is: Have you yet seen that you are many
different persons, and that you are not one permanent person, but a
mixture of different 'I's who act through you at different moments?
You may be able to see changes in people, you may be able to see that
he or she is in a good mood to-day, but have you seen the same thing
in yourself and not taken it as one person changing, but as changing
persons in you? How strange is this form of egotism that seems to
dominate us, that makes us think that we ourselves are always one and
the same person. You will notice that both the realization of our
mechanicalness and the realization that we are not one but many
different 'I's strikes at our egotism and self-love. Through self-love we
attribute everything to ourselves. That is why we are taught in esotericism, especially in the Gospels, that the only cure for self-love is love of
God. This means that we gradually come to the conclusion that we do
nothing ourselves and that everything in us comes from some other
source. Sometimes I say to you: How do you move your body? How
do you think? You cannot give an answer. And yet everything you do
you ascribe to yourself. You even ascribe love to yourself, perhaps one
of the worst sins. The point is that the Work teaches that we are recipient
organisms, that we receive everything and that we can do nothing ourselves, neither think, love, nor anything else. In attributing to ourselves the existence of a real permanent 'I' we not only do enormous
harm to ourselves but we do enormous harm to other people in taking
them to be one permanent 'I', one permanent person.
The third point in relating ourselves to others depends on the science
of external impressions. We do not notice how we behave and so often
give a quite wrong impression to other people. We may have difficulty
in expressing ourselves, we may have some feature that refuses to give
to others, or that makes us not say quite enough for the other person to
understand what we mean, we may be jealous and not notice that we
express it the whole time, we may be negative and shew it in intonation,
and so on, and yet we may be surprised that other people do not seem
to care for us. The science of external impressions is a subject that we
have only talked about once or twice before and that we will talk about
later on. It means acting towards another person in such a way that
the other person can understand you. It requires a conscious attitude
towards the other person which we are at present scarcely capable of
having. As a rule we are extremely clumsy with one another. I think
you will all admit this. We make a wrong impression on someone
783
without knowing it. That is because we do not know ourselves enough
through self-observation and therefore do not know about the other
person internally. We do not know how to get to a person and think
that a frontal attack, so to speak, is good enough. Of course, that will
only increase second force and here comes in that part of the Work that
deals with four categories of behaviour: foolish sincerity, foolish insincerity, clever sincerity, and clever insincerity. In our relationship with
one another these four categories of behaviour are important to study
in connection with the science of external impressions. Foolish sincerity
is the most mechanical and stupid thing as regards relationships with
one another. People call it telling the truth. It is better to use foolish
insincerity. This may surprise you. But in our relationships with
others we must above all things avoid foolish sincerity where a person
blurts out something that may poison another person's soul and do
infinite harm. Relationship with one another demands a great deal of
attention, as, for example, stopping negative emotions at once. As we
are, we cannot talk about behaving consciously to one another because
we are not conscious men or women yet, but we can try to practise what
conscious behaviour means and live more consciously every day. I
say, live more consciously every day, on purpose. You can live more
consciously every day if you understand what the Work teaches you
to avoid. If you will follow the Work in your behaviour you will feel
something happening to you because the Work is a lever to lift you up
to another level and immediately you apply it to yourself—that is,
sound the second note Re in the Work-octave—you will feel yourself
lifted up.
Quaremead, Ugley, September 29, 1945
COMMENTARY ON MAKING DECISIONS
IN THE WORK
In making decisions in the Work the mind must be free from its
bondage to mechanical attitudes. Otherwise you will make decisions
always from your Personality, from what you have been taught as
being right and wrong. This freeing of the mind only begins when you
let the Work enter into your mind and so change your mind. It is the
Will that must make decisions, not the will of your mechanical mind.
Will belongs to every centre and every part of a centre and, in fact, to
every 'I'. If the Work and its ideas have not begun to change your
mind you will always make decisions in terms of your own mind which
judges things in a mechanical way according to what you have been
brought up to think right and wrong. In other words, you are not
784
making right decisions in the Work-sense from this laid-down, alreadyformed mind that you are using and have always used in life. It is
exactly this so-called mind that the Work begins to attack in order to
lead to change of mind—that is, in order to change the way you think
about everything. On one occasion G. was talking about decisions.
At that time I happened to make a note about what he said which I
will now give you in the exact words that I have recorded. He said:
"You cannot make a decision from one 'I'. For example, you make a
small decision not to smoke, while you are sitting quietly. The next
moment you get up and light a cigarette. When you are not in Moving
Centre—that is, not moving about—you may make a decision that
instantly is forgotten when you begin to move. This is making a decision
from a small 'I', let us say, in the Intellectual Centre." G. said that these
decisions made in small 'I's when, as it were, you are in a certain passing
state of mind, are quite useless. He added: "They are not quite useless
because they shew you how difficult it is to make a real decision. Such
decisions shew us how we cannot control our machines—namely, all
our centres." He was of course speaking about how decisions in the
Work-sense must come from a much deeper level than that on which
such small 'I's exist. Now, as you all know, we make decisions of this
small kind continually, as when we have eaten too much we make
a decision not to eat so much again and all these decisions are made on
the superficial level of the opposites and are practically always, if you
notice, formed in words. Real decisions are not formed in words because
they come from a much deeper source.
G. went on to speak about decisions in the following terms that I
will give you just as he said them: "The ordinary decisions we make are
mechanical and these are quite different from conscious decisions. A
man tries to alter one thing without seeing how it is connected with
other things. This means that he is not properly conscious and so he
makes a mechanical decision." Then G. began talking about what he
called binaries (the word binary comes from the Latin binarius=consisting
of two). He gave us an example of a binary: necessary and unnecessary
—these are opposites. He said that a decision in the Work-sense does
not lie in the binaries but in the Neutralizing Force or Third Force
that turns a binary into a ternary (meaning 'threefold' or a 'triad'—
from Latin ternarius). He said that our life is led in binaries—that is,
opposites. This is called the Law of the Pendulum under which we are
mechanical. He said: "You have a dispute with yourself between Yes
or No. This binary situation in yourself must be transformed by Third
Force and turned into a ternary or triad. In general Man, since he does
not remember himself and so has not got Third Force in his life, is always
swinging between the opposites—that is, his life is always in binaries
which are irreconcilable. This struggle between Yes or No is not
solved by going either with Yes or with No. A third factor has to be
found which turns these binaries into a triad or ternary which no longer
resembles the situation that was produced by the state of being in
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binaries or opposites. Yes or No becomes something quite different
which we can only describe as Yes and No. You will remember Third
Force unites the opposites and contains something of them both and yet
is neither of them. When the mind finds something between Yes and
No a decision can be made." In G.'s words, the binary becomes
ternary—that is to say, the opposites become included in the triad and
from this a result can take place which leads to what he called a
quaternary (which comes from the Latin quaternarius = consisting of
four). This quaternary is active. It consists in first of all a union of the
binaries or opposites through the Third Force, so making a ternary and
leading to a result which makes it a quaternary. Through this result,
which in a sense can be called active, as was said, a further development
can take place. G. said: "Every dispute with oneself should eventually
lead to a new state of oneself. It should not give rise to a habitual
or accustomed side. It leads to a new state via a ternary, which leads on
to a quaternary. As long as the binary state remains, the old state, the
former state, will remain, and the person will simply swing back to
the old position. The path leading to the knowledge of unity consists
first of all in a struggle of Yes or No—that is, a binary state, to begin with
—but it should lead to decision—that is, to a ternary state which is
neither Yes nor No—and this gives a real result—i.e. it leads to a
quaternary. A struggle of Yes-No is not in itself soluble. A third factor
must be found whereby Yes and No become combined by a Third Force
into something quite different from Yes or No. This forms a ternary
and this forms the result called a quaternary."
G. said that the whole secret lies in a man's remembering himself
—that is, giving himself the First Conscious Shock. He said that an
ordinary man is incapable of growing or of doing in any real sense
because he lacks this Third Force which is produced by this First
Conscious Shock of Self-Remembering. "There is," he said, "a kind
of gap in Man which he should fill himself and which unless he fills
it leads to continuing in binaries—that is, he continues in the opposites."
On another occasion G. said: "At this point comes in the individual
as distinct from mechanical man. What is the most important thing?"
he once asked us. He said: "The most important thing is to realize that
we do not remember ourselves, and that for this reason we do not
actually exist as individuals in our experience."
Now you will see from all that G. said that he was talking about
something that it takes a great many years to understand although the
Work is constantly teaching us this very point. You will notice that he
says that decisions cannot be made from the opposites but from some
other force which is neither Yes nor No and that he connects with the
state of Self-Remembering. "This state of Self-Remembering," he
said many times, "is a state that Man was born to possess but he has
lost it. A man is born with the power to remember himself but as he
is brought up amongst sleeping people—that is, amongst people who do
not remember themselves—he soon loses this power. He falls asleep
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himself through the hypnotism of other sleeping people amongst whom
he grows up, and for this reason this Work must start with talking about
the state that Man must reach which is his birthright. That is why I
say to you all that you must practise Self-Remembering." G. used often
to talk about this and I will give you in so many words what he said.
He said that esoteric teaching at one time used to be only necessary in
regard to the Second Conscious Shock, for Man is not born with the
possibility of giving himself this shock and cannot give it to himself
unless he is taught how to do it, but that now owing to the fact that
Man has fallen so much asleep he has to be taught how to give himself
the shock of Self-Remembering before anything can be done to transform him. G. used to talk a great deal about how Man has lost this
state given to him at birth and he used to point to the modern world
and say in many different ways that if we want to study how Man has
lost this state of Self-Remembering and what consequences have arisen
from this loss of Consciousness we have only to look round and see what
is happening in this world, this world in which millions of people are
behaving in a way that can lead to no solution and can only get worse
and worse. "No one," he said, "now remembers himself or even thinks
it is necessary, and for this reason there has been a drop in the level of
Consciousness, and this level is descending more and more every day
and as a consequence people are becoming more and more governed
by external circumstances and more and more helpless to remedy
their troubles."
Now let us return to the subject of making a decision in the Work.
First of all we are taught to make decisions, but we are taught this, as
it were, in order to shew us how we cannot keep them, to see, in short,
how we are really mechanical. But, as you know, this realization of our
mechanicalness is one of the forms of Self-Remembering. We no
longer place reliance on our machines although we observe them at
work. We try this and we try that but we find that it leads nowhere.
For example, we do this, and then we find we do not move, and so on.
We make effort in this direction and find that as a consequence we make
less effort in some other direction. Through self-observation and not
becoming depressed and negative by our failure we can approach a
point in which we can realize that decisions cannot be made in this
way that we have been trying to make them hitherto. We find the
ground of decisions to lie much deeper than we thought and so we learn
to have this patience towards ourselves which is so necessary. We
begin to see what we want to happen to us to change us, and yet in a
way we know that we cannot do it ourselves exactly, and that this
change that we internally wish for will not come about by making any
sudden decisions through small 'I's on the opposites, and at the
same time we wish for this change to take place however we may feel
in regard to it. Then the decision is becoming emotional—i.e. it is
penetrating much more deeply than the level of small sudden 'I's,
sudden forms of self-torture.
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Now, speaking from another point of view, and yet about the same
thing really, it is the Third Force of the Work that can change us. The
first thing the Work says we can do is to remember ourselves and in
connection with that it teaches many other things that we can do, such
as inner separation from negative thoughts and feelings, and so on,
but all these secondary things that it teaches are connected with
Se!f-Remembering. Take, for example, the teaching of the Work about
identifying with ourselves or with external events. All this is connected
with Self-Remembering. All this is studying how we cannot remember
ourselves because, as you know, if you are very identified with your
negative emotions or with the behaviour of someone towards you, you
are not in a state of Self-Remembering but the very reverse. If you are
indulging in inner talking and internal considering and self-justifying,
etc., you are not remembering yourself, you are not in the third state
of Consciousness, which is defined as a state of Self-Remembering. The
teaching of the Work is to lift us up to this state which we should have
and which we were born to have. In this third state of Consciousness,
at this level, influences can reach us which can help. It is as if we put our
heads above the water and felt the air and the sunlight. If any of you
are trying to remember yourselves at any moment of the day and if you
do it at whatever moment you can and quite sincerely, you will always
notice a sudden brightness round you. Now if we were in a state of
Self-Remembering we should know how to make decisions, but when we
are asleep in ourselves, when we are identified and worried about
ourselves, we make decisions from binaries, as G. called them—from the
opposites. G. said: "The struggle between Yes and No is not solved by
Yes or No—i.e. the opposites or binaries." If we were always in a state
of Self-Remembering, always in the third state of Consciousness, our
decisions would be real ones that would lead to a real result which G.
called leading to a quaternary.
There is a story about a blind girl whose five brothers go out into
the world in turn, thinking they can do, but they all fail and become
lost in the world. Then the blind girl goes into the world. She does not
think she can do, but she holds on to a thread that she has woven, one
end of which is bound fast to the Sun. She never lets go of this thread
and as a result she can do—she is able to help her brothers and other
people in the world simply because she does not trust in herself to find
the way but looks to the thread to guide her. Why is this girl shewn as
being blind? She is blind to the external world. She does not act
through her senses but she holds on to something internal. Now if a
person could remember himself all the time and notice everything that
caused him to identify—that is, to cease to self-remember—he would
be holding on to this thread that comes from the Sun, from a higher
level. And if such a person's decision were always to remember
himself, whatever was happening to him, he would be in the third
state of Consciousness, and his decision would be a real decision which
has nothing to do with opposites or binaries. Yet to ordinary people
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it would not seem like a decision, this decision that one should remember
oneself, this decision to fight for Self-Remembering every day in spite
of everything.
Quaremead, Ugley, October 6, 1945
COMMENTARY ON THE APPLICATION OF THE
WORK-IDEAS TO ONESELF
It has often been said that this Work is to make us think. Mr.
Ouspensky used to emphasize that people do not think. They read the
newspapers instead or ask their friends what they ought to think or
they follow the general consensus of opinion. This lack of individual
thinking leads to mass-thinking. Mass-thinking is directed by someone
who tells people how to think by broadcasting, by propaganda. On
one occasion, when I was talking to Mr. Ouspensky about this, he said
that in the past century people used to think for themselves far more than
they do nowadays. "People," he said, "used to think more individually.
To-day it could be said that people have given up thinking and simply
wish to be told what to think. The Work," he added, "is to make us
think for ourselves." On another occasion he said that the only way for
a man to be awakened nowadays is through his thinking part. "Look
at the increasing sleep of humanity," he added. "It is extraordinary
that people give up the one thing that is left to them—namely, the
power of thinking for themselves. All these books, papers, radios, and
so on, prevent people from thinking, but they are supposed to increase
thought."
Now to think is quite different from to remember and it is again quite
different from having fixed opinions. If people take the Work as a
cut-and-dried subject that they simply store in their memory then they
do not think about the ideas of the Work for themselves. When people
cease to think for themselves they surrender the one part of them
that can still lead to awakening. We tend to wish everything to be duly
explained for us without the effort of finding our own solution—i.e.
without the effort of thinking for ourselves. If a person puts to himself
these questions: "Who am I? What am I?" he or she will tend either
to find out from someone some answer to these questions or regard them
as morbid. The Work says a great deal about: "Who am I ?" and "What
am I?" but what it says is in general terms so as to give a guide to
the individual thinking. The Work, for example, says that we are all
asleep in life and that we live in a world of sleeping people in which
everything goes in the only way it can go. If I ask the Work: "What
am I?" the answer is that I am a man asleep. Now it is quite possible
simply to accept the idea that we are all asleep and that we live in a
789
world of sleeping humanity, without ever thinking about it individually.
In that case the Work becomes similar to propaganda and people will
say: "Oh, yes, we are all asleep and we live in a world of sleeping
people," and perhaps they will add: "Well, that is what the Work
teaches us." This is memory without thought. This is not applying
the Work to oneself through thought. In fact, you can accept the ideas
of the Work simply because you do not wish to think. All this means
that the Work is merely in your memory, as something learned by heart
and not as yet engaged with your individual thinking and so combining
with yourself. It has not yet caught fire. Through self-observation you
may see that you are asleep and begin to think about your own state of
sleep for yourself. This is intelligent effort. This is applying the Work
to yourself intelligently. You may then begin to think: Is it true that
humanity is sleeping and that everything happens in the only way it
can happen as long as people are asleep? If you meditate and observe
you will then begin to catch sight of the truth of one of the great ideas
of the Work. You will do this for yourself. This idea of sleep will then
be no longer a matter of the memory but an actual experience that you
have begun to undergo and which will change you. Learning things
by heart is not the Work save in a limited sense. When you learn a
thing by heart it lies merely in the formatory memory. Why it is called
learning by heart I do not know, because the heart is emotional. Now
it is said in the Work that the ideas that it teaches must become emotional.
It is necessary to feel them. It is necessary actually to feel, for example,
that you yourself are asleep and that you yourself are going without
any real inner direction. Just to be told that you are asleep and that
humanity is asleep and to repeat it like a parrot is to miss what the
Work is about and so is a sin against the Work. It means that you have
never observed yourself in the light of the Work. But the Work is light
and it is you yourself who have to realize that you are asleep in the
light and truth of the Work and that you live in a world of sleeping
humanity in which everything happens. Then these ideas will no
longer be a mere matter of the memory, a mere matter of looking up in
your notes, but will become a continual living experience. When this
starts the Work is no longer formatory memory like trying to remember
a scientific book or an article that you have read but a process taking
place in you and changing you—changing your whole way of thinking.
I want to emphasize further this matter of the Work lying in
your memory and the Work lying in your individual understanding.
You may easily remember the idea that you are asleep and you may
accept this idea without any individual thought of what it means. I
mean, you may take it as true. But nothing is true for you unless you
have seen its truth for yourself. You may remember all the ideas of this
Work and accept them in that way and simply call upon your memory
to answer questions. The Work then lies only in your outer superficial
memory and has not yet combined with you through emotional
perception of its truth. You may indeed possess beautiful notes in black
790
and red ink of everything that has been said in the Work and think that
you know about the Work. But you will know nothing about the Work.
It has made no contact with you yourself and the subject of the Work is
you yourself and the ideas of this Work are actually to change this
thing called you yourself. You may, for example, have the most exact
notes about everything that has been said about negative emotion or
about levels of Being and what you have to do in order to make your
Being grow. And yet it may simply lie in your memory without your
having done a single thing to apply the Work to your own Being through
self-observation. Now one of the greatest dangers of this Work is that it
becomes purely formatory, purely a matter of memory. People have
sometimes said to me: "Why don't you make a full draft of all the
ideas of this Work and everything that is said in it so that we could
read it over and over again for ourselves?" Why? Because it would
simply then lie in the outer memory and in such a case you may be quite
sure that the whole level of the Work would drop to zero. It would be
something outside you and not inside you. It would not be emotional.
It would not touch you. A system of esoteric teaching that always
takes itself as final—i.e. living more and more externally—may be
mere memory. It is always possible to answer questions in this Work
from mere memory but that will give no force. You will then understand nothing. You will then not see what any of the ideas mean. You
will simply be a parrot repeating from your memory phrases that you
have heard without understanding their significance. It is in this way
that real teaching becomes eventually useless and for this reason all
esoteric teaching has to be re-cast and given afresh so as to keep it
living. There are very many dead systems that formerly had life in
them. The reason why they died is that people no longer try to understand the ideas that they taught. Let us repeat that memory and thinking are two different things. You can think about what you remember
or you can simply remember and use your memory in a kind of automatic way. If you have ever been an examiner of candidates you will
always know when the candidate is speaking only from memory or
whether he is speaking from what he has thought about. I am told
that nowadays examinations are merely a matter of memory but
in my earlier days this was not the case. In examining candidates
one might see that they had a good memory of the subject, chapter
and page, but they had never thought about the meaning of what they
remembered and often one would find that a person who did not shew
a very good memory for the data of the subject shewed individual
thinking about it and this was regarded as of a much higher order than
mere memory.
Let us take, for example, the Ray of Creation, which may be
in a person's memory. I am here answering a question that was
recently asked me. The question took this form more or less: Could
you explain what the Ray of Creation is? Now here you have an idea
which requires individual thinking. The Ray of Creation can become
791
emotional in its meaning to a person who begins to think about it. It
shews, for example, where we are and indirectly what we are and who
we are and what we have to do and where help can come from. But if
you take the Ray of Creation simply as something that has to be
remembered the whole point of this great diagram is lost. What does
the Ray of Creation shew us emotionally—that is, through emotional
perception of its meaning? It shews us a terrific Universe ordered in
scale from above downwards and it shews us that we are at a place
in this vast machinery that is very low down. It shews our earth as
a very tiny point. Now what is the difference between merely registering all this in the memory and thinking about its significance? There
is all the difference. If you think individually about the Ray of
Creation and put yourself on the earth in your mind, it will become
emotional. It will then give you emotions you do not have ordinarily.
For what reason? For the reason that it lessens our barbarian egotism
and self-sufficiency. It hits at our prestige, at our self-esteem. From
the standpoint of the Ray of Creation, emotionally perceived, we are
practically nothing, practically of no importance whatsoever and
yet given a chance. The Work says that we are so small in the totality
of the Universe that if the existence of the human race ceased we should
scarcely be missed. And yet we are given a chance as the Side-Octave
shews.
Now there is memory and knowing based on memory—i.e. simply
knowing what you remember, which is not really knowing but merely
remembering—and then comes this distinction between knowing and
acknowledging. You may remember a great many things about yourself
and you say then that you know yourself. Do you acknowledge what you
know from that memory? Now there are many kinds of memory. All
the memory that is acquired in the Work through self-observation is
stored up in a different place in centres because it has an emotional
quality connected with the memory you have gained through selfobservation. Emotion changes us. Self-emotions keep us as we are.
Superficial memory will never change you because it is in a sense
external to you. But what becomes deeper and more interior in you
can change you. But this cannot begin to happen unless the mind
changes first of all—i.e. unless you begin to have from the Work
different ideas about yourself and about life. This is new truth.
This new kind of thinking gradually becomes emotional and affects
Being. It begins to awaken the Emotional Centre which is the supreme
object of the Work—not the Emotional Centre that you have at present
which is filled with self-feelings, but a different Emotional Centre.
It is this which changes you. But if the memory of the Work remains
a purely formal memory, a note-book memory, nothing of this kind
can happen. Indeed, you have not yet begun the octave of the Work
which starts from evaluation of a teaching of this kind in the midst
of the world as it is now. The second note of the Work-octave is the
application of the ideas of the Work, and the third note is the realization
792
of your own difficulties in regard to the Work—what is standing in
your way. But merely to hear the Work and repeat it from memory
and write it down in note-books cannot change you. You could learn
Chinese or French in exactly the same way and that belongs to the
external memory and will not change you—that is, make you into a
different kind of man or a different kind of woman. But at first it is
necessary to record and to register the ideas of the Work in the external
memory—that is, the formatory or moving part of the Intellectual
Centre. This is inevitably the first step. One must get to know about
the ideas of the Work and register them. What I am talking about is the
next state—i.e. when these ideas must become emotionally perceived
through application of them to yourself, first of all to your thinking and
then to your Being. When it is said that this Work is to make you think
in a new way it means that the ideas of the Work must begin to change
your way of thinking, and you cannot expect this to happen until you
have registered the ideas by hearing them many times 50 that you will
know them in your memory. The next stage is that you must apply
these ideas to yourself through self-observation. Self-observation
connects the ideas of the Work to yourself. If you do not practise
self-observation the ideas of this Work will remain outside you as
mere matters of memory. But all the ideas of this Work are spermatic
—that is, they are very potent and can generate in you not only a new
way of looking at things but a new way of feeling about things.
In other words, the Work can give you understanding which is
very closely connected with intelligence. It is through understanding
or intelligence that we escape from the continual repetition of the
same thing in our lives. If you use this Work through intelligence
you will begin to change but this can only happen when you take the
Work into yourself and begin to live it. As regards the development of
intelligence the ideas of this Work are inexhaustible. The Work is to
make you think and if you begin to think real thoughts about the Work
you will find your thinking is nourished from a source that never fails.
Quaremead, Ugley, October 13, 194.5
COMMENTARY ON THE OBSERVATION
OF ONE'S PSYCHOLOGY
At a recent meeting here we were speaking about Man's having a
body and also a psychology. A short note was written about this
which I wish now to be read:
"Everyone is fastened to a particular kind of body by birth and then
is fastened later on to a particular kind of psychology by upbringing.
The Work starts not with the body but with the kind of acquired
793
psychology to which we are fastened by upbringing. You can spend your
time in trying to make the body better or the psychology better. The
Work is first about studying one's own acquired psychology and, so to
speak, seeing it, seeing through it. It says that this is not you and as long as
you take you as yourself you are asleep. If you, Mr Smith, take you as
Mr. Smith, and Mr. Smith as you—as 'I'—you are asleep. In the
same way, if you, Mrs. Smith, take yourself as you, you are asleep.
The Work begins by uncritical observation of this Mr. Smith or
Mrs. Smith which you take as you—as yourself. The object of the
Work at first is to see this Mr. Smith, or Mrs. Smith, and separate
from them. The reason for this is that everyone has a real self—a
real 'I'—which is never attained by being Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith.
The life belonging to Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith is not his or her real
destiny, for both of them are invented people and not yet real people
and so attract quite wrong things. But as often as not, or more often
than not, people prefer to lead the life of this Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith,
especially if they are in easy circumstances. And even if they are
continually in difficult or tragic circumstances they cling to being
Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith all the time—that is, to the acquired psychology which is called both Personality and False Personality. But
it is this clinging to Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith that is False Personality
—that is, their invention of themselves. Whether we have been brought
up at Eton or in the Navy or the Army or in any school or profession,
it is exactly this acquired psychology that we have to overcome—that is,
this tedious invention of ourselves. How tedious after a time it is to
see people brought up in these different spheres completely identified
with themselves and their acquired psychologies with which their
vanity is connected. You remember that the Work says that you have
to realize your own nothingness eventually before you can receive the
full baptism of the Work. There are many ancient esoteric symbols for
what a man has to become to undergo regeneration, and re-birth.
Certainly this is impossible as long as he is identified with his acquired
psychology, with his circumstances or birth. The symbol is of a cup or
a wine-glass that is upside down in him. This cup has to be turned up
the other way and, being empty, it can receive quite new ideas—i.e.
the ideas that regenerate a man or a woman and change them into
different beings altogether.
Now the point is that every one of you has a body given to you by
life and a psychology that has been acquired by upbringing. A
beautiful woman marries a handsome man but what about their
respective psychologies ? As often as not they find that their psychologies
are completely incompatible. A person's face, unless you are very
subtle, does not give you that person's psychology. But the chief idea
here is that each one of you has a different psychology that has been
acquired through upbringing and about which you know absolutely
nothing."
We were talking on another occasion about this question of each
794
person's having a psychology and I said that it was extraordinary that
it takes us so long in the Work to realize that we have each of us a
particular kind of psychology quite apart from our physical body.
As you know, the Work starts with your psychology, with the kind
of person you are psychologically. We agreed that this recognition
that one has a particular kind of psychology with various attitudes and
buffers and opinions, and so on, is not experienced by people in general,
and that people, since they do not see their psychology, always imagine
that they are open-minded, unbiassed and, as it were, quite free in their
psychological make-up. People start from this idea. They may be
aware of their bodies but not of their psychologies. They do not see,
for example, that they may be psychologically extremely narrow,
extremely difficult, extremely biassed. Quite the contrary, they feel
that they are without any psychology, as it were. And so they get to the
illusion, amongst many others, that they can always help everyone,
comfort them, mother them and father them, and so on. Now the
Work starts with self-observation, and self-observation does not start
with the body which after all you can observe in the mirror every day,
but with what kind of person you are psychologically. It is only through
self-observation that you can begin to see what you are like psychologically. You may be very beautiful or handsome as regards your body
but what are you like psychologically? Now to imagine that a beautiful
woman has a beautiful psychology or that a handsome man has a
handsome psychology is pure nonsense. I said in connection with
this discussion how extraordinarily difficult it is for people to
separate from the sensory impressions of one another. This seems as
if we still cannot get beyond physical appearance and take physical
excellence of one kind or another as meaning at the same time similar
psychological development. It is like thinking that because a peacock has a marvellous display of beauty in its feathers it has therefore
an equally beautiful psychological development. You will agree
with me that when you hear a peacock speak you will not think that
it has a most beautiful mind or a most beautiful emotional development.
I think that it is worth while speaking about this great difficulty
that people have in regard to self-observation. Self-observation
does not consist in looking in the mirror and making yourself up to
look more beautiful or handsome. This is merely observation of the
body and leading the life of the body and feeling your sense of 'I'
from your physical appearance. Self-observation is not done through
looking at yourself in a mirror except under certain conditions. Selfobservation is looking at your own psychology—i.e. at the kind of man,
the kind of woman you are, psychologically. This seems to be very
difficult for a great many people to understand—namely, that they are
a physical body and also that they all have a particular form of psychology or mental make-up. It is to this psychology or mental make-up
that the Work directs its attention through self-observation. But it is
quite true to say that many people after hearing this Work for many
795
years never really observe what they are like psychologically. They take
their psychology for granted. They take all their prejudices, all their
ways of taking daily things, all their psychological reactions, for
granted. In other words, they do not see themselves, and you can only
see what you are like psychologically through self-observation. The
trouble is that people never practise self-observation and so never bring
themselves to account, always feeling that they have no psychology.
They feel that all that they do and say is quite right. This second
education that the Work consists in is about observing this psychology
that everyone so easily takes for granted not noticing that it is a definite
thing, a definite make-up, from which they can gradually become free
if they practise to begin with the first line of Work—that is, selfobservation in the light of this teaching. This requires a considerable
effort. Sometimes people make this effort for a time and begin to catch
a slight glimpse of themselves and what they are like psychologically
and then go to sleep again perhaps for many months and perhaps for
ever. To feel that one's opinions are all wrong, actually to see that one
has behaved wrongly all one's life, psychologically speaking, is a very
difficult thing to accept.
Now the development of Consciousness which this Work is all about
is first of all to see what you are like psychologically and as a result
to begin to distrust very much your psychological behaviour. This
may be impossible for the majority of people. I mean by that that
it would be just as well that they do not see what they are like
psychologically. And it would be much better for such people to
carry on just as they are with all their acquired psychology, all their
buffers, with their attitudes, their opinions, and so on. But anyone
who has in himself Magnetic Centre is capable of changing, psychologically speaking. And it is with these people that I wish to deal in
the Work—that is, with people who are not identified completely with
themselves, because otherwise there is no chance to change. A man
or a woman who has never doubted himself or herself but who is always
convinced of being right from his or her acquired psychology—i.e.
from what they have been taught—is not suitable for this Work.
Sooner or later such people will come up against the possibility of
realizing that they cannot take themselves for granted as they have done
hitherto but must alter their whole way of taking things, their whole
way of judging things. Now if they cannot stand this, if, in short, they
are completely fixed in their own acquired psychology, remember that
nothing can be done with such people except to avoid any frontal
attack on them.
Now this is a very short paper but it is about this subject which
is the most important thing to understand early in the Work as far as
I know at present. A man or a woman coming into this Work must be
able to realize after a time that their psychology may be wrong from
the Work point of view. They must realize that what they have to do
in this Work is to change their psychology to which they are fixed
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and which they take as the only psychology they can have. How many
of you can say: "I may be all wrong, all my viewpoints may have been
wrong. I may have a quite wrong idea of everything, including myself.
All my judgments in the past may have been wrong." Such thoughts
change one provided one has something else to hold on to that teaches
one what is right. But if you start off this Work with the deep conviction
that you are all right psychologically as you are and merely wish to hear
out of a kind of curiosity what the Work teaches you will never get
anywhere at all. The subject of this Work is you yourself. How can you
change if you remain the same? How can you change psychologically
if you always remain the same psychologically? How can you change
if you accept your present psychology and take it as final, as the last
word, as it were, in psychological development?
Now you all know perhaps how difficult it is to shew a person that
he or she is taking things in the wrong way. Instantly you give offence.
But supposing that this person has some power of self-observation,
supposing that he or she can begin to see what is meant by uncritical
self-observation and through it see what they are like and have been
like hitherto? Then the Work can come down on that person as a force
that leads to inner change, inner development. It is exactly through
self-observation that the Work can grow and can become not merely a
source of mutual recrimination or judgment. This ancient phrase:
"Know thyself" means exactly this. If through uncritical self-observation you have seen the kind of woman, the kind of man, you are, you
will be able to stand all shocks in this Work and be able to go with it
and receive its force. But if you have never noticed the kind of person
you are and how you behave towards others mechanically—i.e. every
day—and if you have never observed your own imaginations of yourself
and seen through them, how can you expect your psychology to change
or how can you expect to understand what the Work is about?
Now what is it we have to observe in ourselves to change our
psychology? This Work teaches that we have to observe ourselves
psychologically from a certain definite angle. All the practical side
of the Work that is taught over and over again is about how one has to
observe oneself—i.e. one's psychology. Do you wish me to enumerate
again all the things that the Work teaches about practical self-observation? I think it is always necessary that we should be reminded
of what we have to observe in ourselves. Take one thing only: Are you
making internal accounts all the time? Are you feeling that you are
unhappy or badly treated or not given your right position? Are you
always self-justifying when in a sense you know you are at fault?
Are you indulging in long trains of negative emotion? Notice when you
take offence and then think about False Personality. This is especially
important for some of you. Try to see False Personality in yourself
through self-observation. Try to see how it complicates your ordinary
life in such a way that when you might with a little more consciousness
have taken a situation calmly you prefer to make an uproar. Try to
797
observe your opinions and when you are speaking from your opinions
without any real thought. Pull yourself up sometimes and say to yourself: "What are you thinking about? What are you feeling?" Observe
it. Observe how much of the time you are fast asleep and reacting
mechanically the whole time, not giving that conscious shock to yourself
called Self-Remembering. Observe how you never make any real
effort but always avoid real effort. Observe all your forms of internal
considering and try to observe your fantasies about yourself and don't
believe them. Observe what you are caught by, what you are always
held down by, and what turns you sour, and work against these things
by inner separation. All these, and many other things, as the Work
teaches, have to do with changing your psychology. For example,
observe whether you are negative at this moment. Are you going with
it? Are you going to identify with this negative emotion at this moment?
Or are you going to separate from it and not go with it? This is work on
oneself. Do you all understand that you have fixed and habitual attitudes
such as that you expect a meal at a certain fixed hour and so on? Can
you change your attitude to such fixed things in yourself? Can you
change the way when you read the newspapers you feel instantly negative
—i.e. mechanically negative towards one person or another? This is
mechanical reaction due to your acquired psychology so try to notice
how you psychologically react to everything that you are confronted
with and try to change it, in the light of what the Work teaches. Above
all, notice when you get negative. Notice this especially before it has
gone too far and do everything you can to separate from this negative
reaction. This is real work on yourself and it will give you very much
if you do it. But as long as you take yourself for granted nothing can
happen to you at all. In this Work we have to learn that we are ail
wrong in everything that we do and say and feel and think, from the
standpoint of Higher Man—i.e. Conscious Man.
Quaremead, Ugley, October 10, 1945
A NOTE ON THE LAW OF FATE
When we struggle against identification many unnecessary
emotions disappear. What does it mean to struggle against identification? This question brings us to ask ourselves: "What is it in
myself that makes me identify with this or that event, with this or
that situation?" The answer is that it is one's own level of psychology.
We were speaking last time about this so important point—namely,
that we all have a certain psychology that causes us to react and behave
as we do. In my own case, if I can begin to see this psychology that I
take for granted in myself which has been acquired from innumerable
793
influences on me from childhood and which in the Work would be
called in my case Nicoll, and if I begin to try to separate from some of
these habitual mechanical reactions to Nicoll, I will then have a
chance to change my level of Being. But if I cannot see Nicoll I shall
not be able to change in my Being.
Now Nicoll in my case is called Personality, and Personality is under
the Law of Accident. But there is a certain part of this acquired psychological machinery (which in my case is Nicoll) that is called False
Personality. And this is under even more laws than Nicoll is under.
What are the characteristics of False Personality? They consist in
ascribing everything to oneself through vanity or pride. The acquired
Personality itself may contain both good and bad things, good and
bad habits, but what keeps them active is really the power of the False
Personality which holds everything together just as it is and makes
change of Being so very difficult and such a process of being wounded
and hurt and upset.
Let us speak again about the Law of Accident and the Law of
Fate. But I must warn you to begin with that it is not at all an easy
idea to understand. In other words, it is something that you have to
understand rather than something that is explained in so many words
to you. The first thing that we must grasp is that we have different
levels in us. Man is a small cosmos, a microcosmos, reflecting to a
certain extent the great Cosmos or Macrocosmos. The Macrocosmos
is given to us in the form of the Ray of Creation that you can all see is
based on different levels. A high level, such as, let us say, the level of
the Sun, is under 12 orders of laws, and the lower level under which we
live is under 48 orders of laws. The Work says as a general formulation
that the Essence in us is under 24 orders of laws and the Personality
taken as a whole is under 48 orders of laws. Now supposing that a
man is very identified with his Personality through his False Personality
which latter is under an even greater number of laws—the Work says
that such a man is under the Law of Accident. He may be killed when
he should not be killed—that is, he may be killed through the Law of
Accident because he is identified with his Personality. All this Work
consists from one side in not identifying with the Personality, particularly
with the False Personality, and in separating from the Personality.
If you are completely identified with yourself as you are and take
yourself for granted and do not see that you have anything called a
psychology or a Personality, if you always act mechanically from your
acquired Personality and take it as yourself, you are not under the Law
of your Fate which belongs to Essence or the more internal side of you.
Everything you do is in a sense unreal because you are not really doing
it from yourself. As understanding grows in a man or a woman in the
Work they see more and more that lots of things they have been thinking
and saying are not real and do not really belong to them at all but have
been acquired by imitation. Now you know that the Work says that
understanding is the strongest force that we can create in ourselves and
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the more understanding that we have in our personal Work the more
results we shall get. When a man does something from his understanding he is not acting mechanically from his False Personality—he is
acting from something more internal, something deeper, and when this
is the case, he is more likely to be under the Law of his Fate. But when
he acts from the purely external side of himself, from some excited
dutiful side, he is more likely to be under the law of Accident. A man
who does everything because he wants to be just the same as other
people is of course a man who is not acting from anything internal.
He is acting from the outer side of himself, from the Personality, speaking in general. He does not really think what he is doing or even feel
what he is doing, save that he is doing his duty, as he was taught. He
is going with the mechanical stream of things, and he has no trace of
individual thinking, of individual feeling, in regard to any situations
that arise, but always acts mechanically according to the formation of
his own Personality. In other words, there is no real man there, no
real individual, but a kind of mass-produced man. Such a person is
under the Law of Accident more or less and such a man has very rarely
any sincere moments with himself. He goes with his psychological
machinery that has been laid down in him and simply is his machinery
—that is, he is completely identified with his Personality and takes his
Personality as himself. He never questions what he does, he never thinks
about what he does. Such a man belongs to the mechanical circle of
humanity and is a long way from the Conscious Circle of Humanity.
His views are stereotyped, his buffers are fixed, his attitudes are acquired,
and so there he is—quite an excellent kind of man, but quite asleep to
himself. Such a man is not under the Law of his Fate.
Now supposing such a man begins to observe himself in the light
of the teaching of this Work and begins to notice what he says and how
he behaves and occasionally begins to wonder why he says these things
and always behaves like that—such a man is beginning to observe
himself and through self-observation begins not to identify with himself.
This man, this woman, has begun to pass into a more internal person—
himself—herself. They are beginning to separate from the Personality,
and especially from the False Personality which governs external life.
They are beginning to pass into themselves, into a deeper level of themselves. In other words, they are beginning to pass into what is really
in them, what is essential. And, through this struggling against being
identified with themselves as they mechanically are, they inevitably
find that many emotions that they have hitherto taken as necessary
become unnecessary. They find that many unnecessary emotions
disappear from their lives and this also applies to many thoughts,
many ways of thinking, which they formerly thought were so important.
All this means a movement inwards, towards the essential part of oneself, which is the real part. And this movement begins to make a man,
a woman pass more and more under the Law of their essential Fate, to
be what they are and should be essentially. Eventually they may come
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actually under the Law of their own Fate. Notice that the Law of
Fate that belongs to the Essence is composed of fewer laws than the
laws governing the Personality, this corresponding to rising in the Ray
of Creation, or the Macrocosm, to that level called the planetary level,
which is under 24 laws. Notice also that this is called in the Work
development. You might think that development means increase of
laws but if we take the level of the Moon in the Ray of Creation it is
under 96 orders of laws and this is no development. On the contrary,
it is a descent into increasing and useless perplexity. All development
consists in becoming more internal in your understanding through
seeing what you are like and separating from it and at the same time
it signifies a raising of the whole level of your being in terms of the
Ray of Creation to a level where fewer laws exist. The Work teaches
that it is possible for a man to reach the level of the Sun in himself. As
you know, in the Ray of Creation, the Sun, as it is called, is under 12
orders of laws, and such a man has Real 'I' or Master at work in him
—i.e. he obeys these highest principles concealed in Man's psychology.
But this is very far from us at present. At present we are all concerned
with separating from the Personality and seeing what the Personality
in ourselves is like, and one way of seeing ourselves is, as was said,
seeing unnecessary emotions. Do you imagine that worrying is an
unnecessary emotion? Do you think that feeling rather tragical about
everything is an unnecessary emotion? Do you think that being very
concerned about the way that someone is going or that the world itself
is going may possibly belong to the category of unnecessary emotions ?
The Work says that all negative emotions are unnecessary, whether
they are anxious or worrying or what you might call dutiful emotions.
Some people, very anxious to do this Work, often say something like
this: "I believe in this Work, I believe it will help me. I would like so
much to know what it is I have to give up." They ask this question
anxiously or even tragically. As it were, they clasp their hands and
say: "What have I to give up?" Well, the answer is that it is exactly
this clasping of the hands, this tragic attitude, that they have to give up.
They have to see that they are identified with being anxious and this is
the very thing that they have to sacrifice. But do you expect a person
who is very identified with himself to understand what is meant? This
is the great difficulty in teaching this Work. When people say they will
give up, for example, their will, they make a great mistake. They speak
as if they had will, as if they could give it up as a final act, as something
finished for ever. All this is illusion. Of what use is it to give up what
one has not got? And what is it that these people have to see first of
all, before they even begin to understand what the Work is about?
They have to see, through long observation of themselves, that they
have not got Will, but many different wills. Each 'I' in turn has a
different Will, so how can they give up Will? The Work says there is
only one thing that we can give up—our own suffering. But do you
imagine that people see this quite easily? Do you imagine that it is
801
something quite simple to give up your mechanical suffering? And yet
it is the only thing that we can give up at our present level. Give
up your suffering. Cease to suffer uselessly. Does that connect with
your negative emotions, with your self-pity, with your private ideas
about your undetected significance? Yes, it is all this that is connected
with your suffering. When you have done some act of this kind on
yourself for one moment you will feel a lightness and happiness that
will shew you that the Work is quite right in what it says. You will
see for yourself the truth of what the Work teaches. And no one can
do this Work unless he begins to see the truth of what this Work
teaches through his own experience. Now to give up one's suffering
demands that one does not identify with all that one is at present.
It demands that one begins to see that one has an acquired psychology
that reacts in a certain way mechanically from which one is beginning
to separate by personal and sincere work on oneself. And this is a
movement towards the real side of oneself, the internal side, the
essential side, which is under 24 laws of Fate. Fate is what we should
be. Everyone is created to be something through Fate and the more he
or she becomes this essential individual that they were created to be,
the more do they pass under fewer laws. Fate really means that which
is primarily ordained, one's own real destiny. When a man begins
to will this Work into his own life he will inevitably pass towards
his inner growth, his inner destiny. Certainly he may become something
quite different from what he was in life. Many accidental things, that
belong to his Personality and especially to his False Personality, may
fall away from him. But such a man will be doing this Work and reach
a point that it is possible for certain people to reach, a point which
gives him his true centre of gravity and his true Being. He will then
no longer be an artificial man, an invented man, on the surface, but he
will become a Real Man. The object of this Work is to make us real
men and real women, not invented people, governed by False Personality, for, as such, nothing that happens to us, or let Us say, very little,
really belongs to us at all. If you remember the principles of this Work,
and if you try to put your will, such as you have, from 'I's that wish to
work, into following these principles, into following certain rules that
you were taught, especially about wrong talking, inner and outer,
if you begin to obey the central idea that you must, for example,
remember yourself, it may be said that you are giving up your ordinary
will, such as it is. By following the Work, by meditating on it, by
thinking about it and bringing it into your life every day, in a fresh
way, you will begin to pass towards the real side of you, and so out of
the Law of Accident. From one point of view you do not have to give
up anything, nor do you have to be told to do something. So much of
this Work consists in not doing something that you always did. But
here lies a long struggle to understand how very gentle the influences
of this Work are. You have, for example, to give up your negative
emotions. What does it mean to give up your negative emotions? It
802
means in the first place to follow what the Work says. But how can
you give them up? First of all, you have to observe them, and then try
not to identify with them. Most people, about five minutes after they
get up in the morning, begin to identify with negative emotions—
i.e. they identify with their habitual personal reactions to life. They
do not observe what happens to them simply because they have no
self-observation in the Work-sense. They let themselves go. They
do not remember themselves. They do not hold themselves together
internally. In other words, they instantly fall asleep on rising. They
pass the day in attracting to themselves situations and things that would
not come to them if they remembered themselves. Half an hour's
work in the morning can make a great difference all day long. You
can all see for yourselves what it means to be under the Law of Accident
and the Law of Destiny or Fate. But people have to find this out for
themselves. People often open letters the moment they get up.
I wonder why. Is it necessary to be plunged immediately into the
accidents of life without having formed in yourself a certain resistance
to life, without having a certain sacred moment with yourself of
Self-Remembering, so that life and all its accidents do not instantly
rush in and occupy the whole psychology?
Quaremead, Ugley, October 27, 1945
THE OBSERVATION OF 'I's AND STATES
Every 'I' produces its own state. Everyone is in a certain state
at a certain moment owing to an 'I' that produces this state in him or
her. If you find it difficult to study different 'I's in you there are
two things that help. Different 'I's are grouped in personalities
within the Personality—for example, a man has a certain personality
connected with his college and a quite different personality connected
with his domestic life. These sub-divisions of the Personality as
a whole are themselves composed of many different 'I's. On one
occasion Mr. Ouspensky was talking about the difficulty of seeing
different 'I's and said we should try to see groups of 'I's which might be
called sub-personalities. A man goes to his club and he has a certain
personality; he then goes to his office where he has a different personality; and then he goes home where he is in a different personality.
The other way of studying 'I's is to notice one's state. As I said, each
'I' produces its own atmosphere, its own state in oneself. In viewing
any matter, if we have any power of successive observation, we soon
recognize that we take it in different ways at different times. This is
because of the shifting kaleidoscope of 'I's. When a particular 'I' is
predominant we view things through this 'I' and the next moment
803
when a different 'I' comes up we view the matter in a quite different
way. Now one can easily become negative or depressed when one begins
to notice this in oneself. But this is quite wrong from everything that
the Work teaches us. We have no Real 'I', no permanent 'I', and have
to realize it. We have to see the truth for ourselves. This continual
change of different 'I's in us is exactly what we are told to observe.
Sometimes people say: "Cannot you make up your mind definitely
as to what you think about Mr. X? Do you like him or not?".
But this question is foolish because it all depends which 'I' you are in
when you happen to meet him. Each 'I' will induce a different state
in you and in each different state you will view him differently.
Now if you have begun to have Work-memory through self-observation you will begin to know this already. This means that you no longer
believe in your momentary different states—i.e. in your different
'I's which keep coming up in turn. 'I's cannot be overcome save by
self-observation and non-identifying. A person may have the idea that
he should really make up his mind definitely, let us say, about Mr. X.
I will ask you this question: "What is going to make up your mind?"
Each 'I' will make up your mind quite differently—that is, each 'I'
will give you a quite different outlook towards him. If you begin to
observe your 'I's and not identify with him you will finally get a
picture of Mr. X. composed of all the different angles that each 'I'
in you sees. You will therefore get a composite picture of Mr. X.—not
a picture based on the opposites but a full picture of him. I will add
here that this is quite impossible unless you can see different 'I's
in yourself. If you have no memory arising from moments of selfobservation and Self-Remembering you will never be able to get a
full picture of Mr. X. And what is the reason? The reason is that you
have no composite picture of yourself yet and therefore are still in
Imaginary 'I' whose power over us makes us say 'I' to every 'I'. As you
know, you have to get rid of the idea that you are one unvarying
person. This hits Vanity and Pride, perhaps even more especially
at Pride. You know how difficult it is for a person to admit that
he has changed his mind. I think this is Pride. You surely all know
people, if you don't know yourself already, who think they are always
the same. Such people are living under a delusion. They do not
see that at every moment they change owing to a succession of different
'I's that come into their conscious sphere and take charge of it for
the moment and induce a certain state. Do you remember what
was said about 'I's, how each 'I' is Caliph for a moment? After a
time it is quite possible to reach that stage in the Work in which you
do not believe so much in yourself as a real person. This is part of
the loosening process of the Work and gives a form of consciousness
that life rarely grants us—i.e. the new consciousness that comes
through self-observation in the light of esoteric teaching. This consciousness gradually begins to approach the Third Level of Consciousness, or the Level of Self-Awareness,- or the State of Self-Remembering,
804
or Self-Consciousness. I can think of no better definition of what
Self-Awareness means than that you begin to be aware of typical 'I's
in you and do not allow them to become Caliphs and do not identify
with the states they induce.
Now do you recognize your states and do you recognize that at
every moment you are in a particular state and in each state you see
things differently just as in walking round a house you see it from
quite different angles at every moment? You may not be able to
see an 'I', because I think sometimes people think of an 'I' as something written on the blackboard and do not see that an 'I' can only be
detected by the state it produces in you. An 'I' cannot be recognized
as an 'I' just like that. It can only be recognized by observing the
intellectual and emotional state that it induces. For example, you
find yourself having certain thoughts and feelings. Or you are in a
mood. Perhaps you do not yet realize clearly enough that this is
due to an 'I' in you that is predominant at the moment. You are identified with this 'I' and see everything through this 'I'. You are thinking
through it, you are having its thoughts, you are feeling through it,
you are feeling its emotions. Now if you are observing your thoughts
and your emotions and after a time begin to recognize that you have
had the same thoughts and emotions previously, you will begin to
recognize that this is an 'I' in you, and if you have any memory through
self-observation you will know quite well that these thoughts, these
emotions, become quite different later on—i.e. when a different 'I'
is predominant in you. In fact, you may laugh at these thoughts,
these emotions, and wonder why you took everything in that way.
This is exactly what an 'I' is. You cannot see an 'I' itself as you can see
a human being or a butterfly or a piece of coal: it is not an object outside you. You can only observe an 'I' through its effects on you, through
what it is suggesting to you, through what it is saying to you and trying
to make you think and trying to make you feel. It is a very good thing
to ask oneself sometimes: "In what state am I?" After a time in the
Work you will find that this is a difficult question to answer because you
have so many memories of different states, apart from the one you
are in, that you do not accept the particular state that has come
in through the 'I' that is trying to induce it and to make you believe
in it at the moment. In other words, you begin to shift and sway away
from your successive states—that is, from the power of successive
'I's that seek to hypnotize you and make you obey them. This is
movement towards Real 'I'. Real 'I' of course obeys nothing but itself
and controls all other 'I's. But in order to approach this psychological
state where Real 'I' lives—and it is a long journey—you must first
of all not submit to your changing 'I's which are not you, not Real 'I',
but which are always trying to persuade you that they are you. Every
'I' says to you something like this: "Look now, this is what you really
are. I am you and this is how you feel, this is how you really think."
And I assure you that these 'I's are very clever hypnotists and in the
805
vast majority of people their action is extremely successful. The vast
majority of people believe in every successive 'I' that flits into their
minds at a particular moment.
So try to notice 'I's through observing your states. We begin
this Work by noticing our states and the quality of our thoughts
and the quality of our feelings. Let me give you one more example.
Someone came to me the other day and said: "I feel rather hopeless
about my progress in the Work." I said: "Why do you not observe
this 'I' in you?"
Quaremead, Ugley, November 3, 1945
A NOTE ON RELAXATION
It is a long time since we spoke about relaxing. On several
occasions in the past we were told that we had to relax and to practise
relaxation every day. Of course this has become a familiar word
having no meaning nowadays in ordinary parlance, but when the
Work speaks about relaxing it is speaking about something quite
different that we should all practise. Let me remind you what the
Works says about relaxing. It says that all relaxation must begin
with the small muscles, such as the small muscles of the face, the
fingers and the toes. We were taught to begin with the face and to
put internal attention into the small muscles of the face and to relax
them—the muscles round the mouth, the muscles round the eyes, and
even the eye-muscles themselves.
Now if we speak about relaxing we have to speak about internal
attention. We have two kinds of attention, one external and one
internal. For example, when one observes oneself, one's moods,
thoughts, and so on, one is using internal attention—i.e. attention
not directed towards any external object, visible, tangible, or audible,
through the senses. Self-observation is not about anything that the
senses can see, hear, etc. but about what only the internal sense can
observe. This is internal attention. In regard to placing consciousness
through attention into different parts of your body, you must begin this
gradually. For instance, can you become conscious through internal
attention in a particular part of your body, let us say, your left foot,
and then switch it over to your right foot, and so on? It is quite useless
to try to relax unless you have some idea of what internal attention
directed towards a particular part of the body means. As I said, the
Work teaches that relaxation begins with relaxing the small muscles
of the face. It would be no good trying to relax if your eyes were screwed
up and your mouth pursed and your jaws clenched. For this reason it is
necessary to become internally conscious of the state of the muscles
806
in your face, to begin with. And this act of internal attention will
produce in you the right condition for relaxing the whole body. The
point however is that you have to do it. As you know, most people
have no time to do anything like that. They are always carried on in
the life-stream of useless thoughts, anxieties and worries. And people
even think that to interrupt this purely mechanical stream of things that
occupy them the whole time is something that they should not do, that
is quite wrong, and so on. But this is not the case. If you can interrupt
this mechanical stream that governs you, the stream of life, this cinemafilm, that is always running through you, even for a moment, you will
begin to get force. So try to begin with putting your internal attention
into the muscles of your face and notice how much attention is lying
there.
Mr. O. once said that modern life is always producing tensions
in our muscles, anxious expressions, hurried movements, and all this
wastes an enormous amount of energy. But, for Heaven's sake, do not
try to relax the small muscles of your face when you are crossing
Piccadilly Circus. This would be a great mistake. In fact, it might
be called making right effort at the wrong time, and if you make right
effort at the wrong time, or wrong effort at the right time, you will get
into difficulties. There is a time for everything—that is, a right time
at which to do things. For this reason I wish to-night to have the
following passage from Ecclesiastes read about the right time to do
things, for if you make an effort at the wrong time, even although the
effort may be right, it will have no result.
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to
plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to
kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build
up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a
time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather
stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from
embracing; a time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and
a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to
keep silence and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace."
(Ecclesiastes III 1-8)
Imagine standing still amid the traffic and trying to relax the
small muscles of your face and then if you are run over complaining
that you were told to do it. This is merely foolishness comparable with
the foolishness of people in the early Work who were told to go against
mechanicalness and thought it would be a good thing to eat coal, or to
stand upright in empty buses, or to eat with the knife in the left hand
and the fork in the right hand. All these efforts are useless because they
are not intelligent. This Work is about intelligent effort.
We asked a question the other day at one of the meetings here:
"Have you studied your Being yet at all and have you noticed what in
your Being you should change in the light of the Work?" Supposing
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you have never observed your Being at all and keep on trying to do this
Work just as you are told, will it do you any good? Will it connect itself
with yourself? Supposing, for example, you never notice your negative
emotions, your envy, your jealousy, and so on, and yet you always try
to work on the Emotional Centre in a theoretical way, will it do you any
good?
Now we have to speak to-night about posture, about muscles—
in short, about Moving Centre. I suppose you know that each centre
hypnotizes the other centres. Supposing a man in his Moving Centre
invariably adopts a depressed muscular posture and the small muscles
of the face express gloom of some kind—do you think that such a
man will be able to have pleasant emotions or interesting thoughts?
Certainly not. He is chained by his muscular posture. You all know
that depressed states make us look depressed in posture. If one is
intelligent enough in the Work one will alter one's posture if one is
trying to separate from the negative emotion that has got hold of
one, because each negative emotion will produce its own muscular
posture. A man comes into the room, bent, drooping, gloomy-faced,
and you know at once that he is in a negative state, which may be
habitual, unless he alters his muscular posture. In the same way,
to return to the question of the small muscles of the face alone, if
a person always has a drooped mouth, a weary or troubled or anxious
look, you know quite well that this person is in a bad state and that
unless you can make this person smile or stand more upright he may
remain hypnotized by his posture. Understand please that posture is
not merely a question of the big muscles of the body but of the small
muscles as well. I mean that it is no good standing upright with a
gloomy face because the face—that is, the hundred and one small
muscles that control the expression of the face—is most directly
governed by the Emotional Centre, for the face reflects the
emotions more than anything else does. You would not like a man
speaking between his teeth to tell you that he loves you. One would
know at once that he was lying and merely using words without any
real meaning, which unfortunately is our condition most of the time.
Now, since the Moving Centre can hypnotize the Emotional and
Intellectual Centres, it is a good thing to notice your posture and your
facial expression, your face-posture, at times, and to study through
internal attention how to alter these postures. The reason is that if
you relax the muscles, especially the small muscles, you will get into a
different state of emotion and of thought. Have you ever noticed
that they begin to assume certain postures, certain facial expressions?
Now supposing that just at that moment either this man or this woman
observes himself (or herself) and starts by relaxing the muscles, both
large and small, would it be possible for the state of rage to continue
and grow? Certainly not. Unfortunately we never work on ourselves
just at the moment when we should, because we much prefer to fall
into typical mechanical reactions to the ordinary affairs of life rather
808
than to take them more consciously with some degree of Self-Remembering. In fact, a man flying into a rage, if he could observe the
tensions in his muscles, would really be a man who could remember
himself at the critical moment and this would entirely change his
behaviour.
Try therefore to study relaxation when you can. Notice how your
face-muscles are contracted and try by putting your internal attention
into the face-muscles to relax them. I advise you to begin with the
muscles round about your eyes and then the muscles round about
your nose (those muscles which sneer so easily) and then the small
muscles all round your mouth and your cheeks; and then put your
internal attention into those muscles which are just under the chin
and in the front of the neck and then go round the back of your
head and relax those muscles that make you stiff-necked, and then into
the bigger muscles round your shoulders and gradually descend through
internal attention right down to your toes. Of course this takes a
long time but it is a very good thing to try to do. I have left out
the muscles of the hands. I should have said: Pass from the shoulders
down the arms to the hands and begin with the wrist-muscles. Put
your internal attention into your wrist-muscles so that your wrists
are quite flexible, quite dropped down, and then try to go into the
small muscles of the fingers and relax them. Everyone in going through
the muscular tensions in their bodies in this way will get to know for
themselves certain groups of muscles which are not ordinarily relaxed
properly. Remember above all that you cannot relax just by saying to
yourself: "Relax". It is an actual exercise of internal attention. It is a
directed effort that has to be made comparatively consciously and even
if you do it only once a week you will get results. Often people are kept
awake at night because of a certain group of muscles being in a tense
state. They may observe their Emotional Centre and their Intellectual
Centre and try to relax-—i.e. not identify with these two centres—but
they do not observe through internal attention the muscular contractions that exist in their body. Now this paper is about muscular
relaxation. It is about relaxing the Moving Centre. I will remind you
again that the Work says that every centre can hypnotize another centre.
In the case of Moving Centre this means that certain typical postures
and typical expressions induce in you typical emotions and typical
thoughts. For example, a hurried person, who cannot stop rushing
about, is a person who has a Moving Centre that assumes certain
positions or postures, or rather, in this case, certain movements,
which belong to the same idea, and therefore is always hypnotized by
Moving Centre assuming these postures and movements. These
hurried movements would induce hurried and anxious emotions and
hurried and anxious thoughts. This is where illness sometimes is
so good. I can only say that I have noticed it in myself very often.
Illness quietens Moving Centre and so often does a great deal of
good by relaxing us. Perhaps some of you have noticed the same
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thing. I may not be emotionally anxious or have any reason to be,
but if I am accustomed to make hurried movements and apparently
never have time for anything, my Moving Centre will hypnotize my
Emotional Centre into feeling anxiety and being harassed. Of course
we must not think for a moment that we are all going to begin to
walk about majestically and slowly just to shew off how we are relaxed.
One has to be really relaxed through internal attention when one
wishes to be and when one feels one needs to be relaxed. If you will
start with the small muscles of your face and do this exercise quite
sincerely you will be very surprised to find out how very often rather
difficult and worrying thoughts completely cease. For example, stop
frowning for a short time. I mean, don't just stop frowning because
you are told not to frown but through internal attention really
go into the muscles that are frowning, and lo and behold, all your
frowning thoughts will disappear. This means that they are kept going
by the posture of your face. Again, people who stick out their jaws and
clench their fists find that it is quite remarkable if they can cease to do
this—they feel quite alien from themselves. But, since we all wish
to remain mechanical and do not wish to change at all, I fancy that
these people will very soon stick out their jaws and clench their fists
and make chests as before.
Now in discussing this paper please remember that we start in
the Work with relaxing the muscles of the face and this takes a lot of
practice in putting the consciousness into these muscles and relaxing
them one by one, and remember especially the small skin-muscles just
underneath the chin and the muscles at the back of the neck. In my
personal experience I have found that relaxing the wrist-muscles when
I have no time to do anything else is extremely useful. Let your hands
drop because the hands so easily express violence.
Quaremead, Ugley, November 17, 1945
WORK ON THE EMOTIONAL CENTRE
At the last meeting here a question was asked about how to work
on the Emotional Centre. The great trouble with the Emotional
Centre is that we are always identified with it—that is, with the
emotions that we are under at any particular moment. We have the
greatest difficulty in separating ourselves from the emotional state
of the moment. We take our emotional state for granted. For
example, we feel emotionally jealous, which is a different thing from
feeling instinctively jealous, and we are completely identified with this
emotion. Or again, we are emotionally depressed, and once more we
take this as our state, as something we do not challenge. As you know,
810
the Work teaches that the Emotional Centre is the most difficult centre
to deal with. You have heard that it is called the mad elephant, and
it is also said that we must try to bring up two tame elephants on either
side of it, one of which is the Intellectual Centre and the other the
Moving Centre. The whole question lies in the difficulty of observing
Emotional Centre in a non-identified way. The reason is that we
identify with our emotions more than with anything else and so I repeat,
we take our emotional state always for granted—not as something that
we have to observe and separate from. Everyone has a typical series of
constantly recurring emotional states which vary from the greatest
excitement and enthusiasms to the most depressed and morbid feelings.
But because the force of the emotions is so blinding people remain
fixed on the turning wheel of their emotions. In other words, people
do not distrust their emotions but take them as if they were genuine
and quite real states. They accept their emotions as right at any
particular moment. And because emotions are so difficult to observe,
owing to our tendency to identify with them, they do not observe them
as something to observe and not go with. The starting-point always
lies in self-observation and in this case observation of the emotional state.
Now can any of you do this yet? Can you observe your emotional state
without taking it for granted as being your real state? Have any of you
yet got in your Work-memory the knowledge of some of your typical
recurrent emotional states? Do any of you yet question your particular
emotional state? In other words, as I said, do you challenge your
emotional state and say to yourself: "Why am I in this emotional
state? What is it due to? And in connection with what has it arisen?"
The effort of internal attention will then begin to separate you from
the emotional state and you may be able thereby to disarm it—i.e.
not go with it, not believe in it, not take it for granted.
There are two sources of our emotional states at any moment.
One source is some external stimulus, such as a person not behaving
rightly to you, or saying something rather unpleasant to you, and
the other is the typical habitual emotion coming from a pathetic
feeling about your past. The overcoming of the past is one great line of
personal work on yourself. Most people have such a great register of
unhappy moments which they have nourished so much that often it is
very difficult for them to escape from these pathetic states which of
course only give rise to continual negative emotions which only create
useless suffering. This personal work is of a very special type and everyone must be able to face it, after a time. The whole of the past must be
cancelled eventually. In other words, you must have nothing against
anyone. You must forgive all debts. And, as has been often said
recently, you can only do this by completely changing your opinion
of yourself through self-observation. The other source is how people
behave to you externally each day. You become negative with someone
for acting in a certain way to you which you think is wrong. And you
must all see that these two sources, inner and outer, of negative emotion,
811
are very closely connected. On one occasion when Mr. Ouspensky was
talking about this subject and how we identify with every emotional
state, he gave as a supreme formula: To non-identify take nothing seriously
except the Work.
Now in regard to being negative and having an unpleasant
emotional state towards a particular person—supposing you have
got to the point of being able to observe that you are in an unpleasant
emotional state, and this of course means that you do not quite identify
with it, so let us suppose that you are slightly conscious of being in a
negative state towards a particular person—how are you going to deal
with it? Here all the work that you have done personally comes in.
Try to formulate what it is that makes you negative as regards this
person and then look into the book of your own self-observation, into
your own records of yourself—that is, into your Work-memory—and
try to see whether what you find so difficult to bear in this other person
is not something that you also have in yourself. Realizing that you are
just as difficult in yourself as the person that you criticize produces
instantly the magical feeling of surrender, of cancelling, of freedom. But
in order to do this, you must use the Intellectual Centre. In other words,
you must think: Here comes in a very good example of what thinking
in the Work-sense means, and I can assure you that whenever you think
in this way it will give you the greatest feeling of freedom that you
have ever experienced.
Again, suppose that you are negative because someone says something unpleasant to you. This is really the same thing as I have been
speaking about. It is extremely difficult to meet and you may not be
able to meet it at the moment. Now every event that happens to you,
such as someone saying something unpleasant to you, should be capable
of being transformed. All this Work is about transforming ourselves,
both in relationship to our past and in relationship to what is happening
to us now. I can only say: Have you ever said anything unpleasant to
other people and can you later on bring the memory up of having said
something equally unpleasant? Once again I can assure you that if
you can do this you will find that this little event of someone saying
something unpleasant to you will become completely cancelled,
completely neutral, although, as I said, you may not be able to do all
this just at the moment when someone is unpleasant to you. So much of
our personal work is done after the event. It is quite useless to forgive:
you have to cancel. And this is always done by finding the same thing
in yourself, and you will always find it if you are sincere. No one can
behave to you otherwise than you behave to other people because your
Being attracts your life. Do you understand that this must be so if it is
possible to believe in psycho-transformism? The trouble with us is
that we will take ourselves for granted as being nice and sweet people,
and you must remember here that you may not have said something
unpleasant externally yourself but you have thought something and
consented to it. In the Work you must understand that what you think
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psychologically in yourself, in your own privacy, counts just as much as
what you say. I am speaking of those thoughts to which you have
consented, those cheques to which you have signed your name. They
count just as much as what is said openly. The Gospels often speak of
this. But the case is quite different with a person in the Work into whose
mind come many unpleasant thoughts about other people but who does
not consent to these thoughts. He sees quite easily how he could combine chemically with them but he will not allow these combinations
really to take place, and after a time his temptation is over. This is
real temptation, because all real temptation is about the Work. When
you do not go with unpleasant thoughts and feelings about other people
but are quite aware of them, you are really working on yourself.
This is personal work. If you are so foolish as to say: Why do I have
these thoughts and feelings about other people? you are quite wrong.
You are only praying to end strife in yourself, but all strife gives the
possibility of development and I suppose it is almost right to say that all
development consists in not identifying with what one is taught by
the Work not to identify with. If you consent to negative, bitter, or
suspicious thoughts, do you not see that you have been tempted successfully and that the small vessel of the Work that you are trying to make,
the small retort, has already got a leak in it which may take you weeks
to repair and often it is a very small thing, apparently trivial, that completely exhausts your force, because it makes a leak in you. Thoughts of
self-pity of course make holes in you. You become, instead of a retort,
a cullender, full of holes, in which everything poured into you, everything you have done for yourself, leaks out. Take envy. Envy seems a
slight thing but it makes a very big hole. Take malice. Take the sting
in your tongue or in your letter. That makes a very big hole. Or take
hatred arising from being offended. All these states are states of identifying.
All psychology, all real psychological teaching, is about how to
make a man grow, and it has a very definite object, the idea being
that if a man retains his force in a certain way he can create in himself
a new man, a different person. The metaphors used to convey
this teaching have varied in different ages. In the alchemical teaching,
which dealt apparently with turning lead into gold, but which really
dealt with changing Man himself into a new being, there is always this
idea of a retort, something that cannot be penetrated by wrong influences, something that brings together all the essential parts of the
man, through a certain friction transforming them into a new body.
We seek to reach a higher level of Being. What is one sign of a
higher level of Being? Let me turn the question in this way: Do
you think a person who is full of self-pity, of envies, jealousies, complaints, malices, depressions, and negative states of all kinds, can
enter the Kingdom of Heaven? What is the Kingdom of Heaven?
Why, nothing but what the practice of real psychology leads to—
which in this Work it is called "Higher Being". So we have something
813
definite to do. It is not a theory nor an invention: it is permanent
teaching. Everything in this Work teaches us about something quite
real and definite. It is a way leading to something definite and possible
for those who can hear. It is about Man and his permanent meaning
—not his local meaning. And there is therefore something that will
necessarily respond to Man if he makes the right requests and efforts
—for Man has meaning and the Universe has meaning.
Now let us return to the original question of how to deal with
the Emotional Centre. This is a difficult thing and no one can expect
to deal with it for many, many years. But people who wish to do this
Work must begin to deal on their own scale with their unpleasant
emotions because the Work teaches that practically all the emotions
that we know are unpleasant. For instance, triumphing over a rival
is a very unpleasant emotion although at our level we take it as a
pleasant emotion. And even the pleasant emotions that we ordinarily
experience turn into the most unpleasant emotions in a flash once our
pride or vanity is touched. The reason is because all our emotions are
based on self-love which is touching them and if there is plenty of
flattery we feel very fine, but if there is not flattery we feel very depressed. For this reason it is a very good thing to distrust one's emotions
whether pleasant or unpleasant, and especially one should distrust
enthusiasms.
Now the Work teaches that there are emotions that do not change
—it calls them positive emotions. It does not call our ordinary
emotions positive—it merely calls them pleasant or unpleasant. The
Work teaches that we do not have real emotions yet. I think from my
own experience that occasionally we do have real emotions for a very
short time and they are always completely free from all self-love.
But I also think that they are very rare and easily invented. Now the
Work says that we cannot create positive emotions for ourselves. It
says that positive emotions do come to us sometimes if we have worked
genuinely and they come as rewards. It also says that the characteristic
of a positive emotion, which comes from Higher Emotional Centre,
is such that it never turns into an opposite. Our ordinary so-called
love turns very easily into hate. A positive emotion has no opposite
because it belongs to the Third Force which is between the opposites.
As you all know, the purification of the Emotional Centre is one of our
great objects. We can reach it only through the purification of the
Intellectual Centre through new ideas both about ourselves and about
other people and about the meaning of all life on Earth. When the
mind begins to see new Truth, then the Emotional Centre can begin to
give up these false emotions. The ultimate object is to awaken the
Emotional Centre so that it can receive positive emotions. And
while this is very far from us at present we all know surely how much
work we have to do on our present Emotional Centre and our present
emotional states that result from it. We have, for example, to give up
having our own way all the time. Do not think that this can be done in
814
a moment. It takes such a long time for us to realize what it means,
this having our own way in everything. But when we begin to dissolve
our ordinary mechanical feeling of ourselves—and I would say here:
how many of you are sure that you are perfectly all right in yourselves?
—then we shall begin to break up the very sources of this self-love and
these self-emotions that at present govern everyone. It is only the things
that you most despise in yourself that are probably some good. Christ
was not born in a manger without significance as to what can grow in
Man.
Quaremead, Ugley, November 24, 1945
WORK ON ATTITUDES
In this short paper let us return once more to the idea of attitudes.
The Work teaches that we must observe our attitudes. You can call
attitudes merely points of view that you always mechanically take, but
this definition is merely introductory to the idea of attitudes. You can
only observe attitudes to begin with by their results. An attitude is
something formed through long habitual taking-for-granted thinking.
The first thing is that we have to allow the truth of the idea that we have
attitudes, typical points of view, typical ways of taking things, and that
this of course belongs to our mechanical and therefore dead psychology
—that is, that side of our psychology that cannot change. You can
have an attitude to the weather, an attitude to religion, or to science,
an attitude to other people, an attitude to politics, and so on. What
people do not see is that their undiscovered attitudes create a great
deal of misery for them and prevent them from understanding. No
one, of course, admits that he or she has typical attitudes.
Let me quote indirectly a recent observation that was sent to
me. The observation was as follows: "I had been trying to keep myself
awake a little, more than once during the day, by observing myself
uncritically. I noticed that it was just as if a bit of me was separated
from the rest of me and was watching the rest of me. One side of myself
was observing the other side but observing it quite uncritically. This
other side of myself which I was observing was taking an often-recurring
life-situation in its own way. Quite suddenly I had a sense of remembering the future. The result was that the whole situation changed.
It was not only the future but it seemed that I observed the past and
the future together in regard to this same situation that I was faced by
and that I saw my attitude to it and seemed to become free from it."
Let me make some comments from the Work point of view on this
observation, which is a good one. There is a certain side of the Work
connected with the idea of Karma-Yoga. This has nothing to do
with acting or playing a role in life consciously which probably none
815
of us can do except for a brief time, as we are at present. KarmaYoga has to do with work on the actual situation that we are in karmically, and finding the right way to behave towards it. It is quite
impossible to practise Karma-Yoga unless one has self-observation
—that is, unless one can divide oneself into an observing side and an
observed side. At every moment each of us is taking some event, some
situation in life, in a mechanical typical way through attitude chiefly.
The practice of this aspect of the Work connected with Karma-Yoga
has nothing to do with changing the situation itself but with changing
the way you take it. If anyone has practised self-observation sincerely
and really reached that stage in which he is not satisfied with himself
and does not think that everything he says or does is always right, then
it is possible to practise this side of the Work connected with that
particular form of Yogi teaching called Karma-Yoga. Now you
must all understand that to be able to take this step means that you
have really got somewhere in the Work and are willing to work on
yourself and no longer completely identify with yourself as you are,
which as you know is usually a very unsuccessful self. I will make
only one or two points here. The first is: How many of you know
or have realized that you can take a typical situation, a typical event,
in a different way from what you have ordinarily done? The second
point is: Can you yet observe yourself uncritically. Everything recurs
in your personal lives, the same situations arise, the same events, and
the same mechanical psychology meets them and reacts in the same
mechanical way, day by day and week by week. In all the attempts of
esoteric teaching to try to make us awaken and become different from
what life has made us, the practice of Karma-Yoga is something that we
can undertake intelligently and one which will give us immediate
results. You will notice that in the above example when this uncritical
self-observation took place there was a sense of the future and also a sense
of the past. The typical attitude, the characteristic reaction towards the
situation, became conscious and at once there was a sense of the
future—that is, that this thing has taken place over and over again.
And suddenly there was a feeling of liberation from this hitherto
unrecognized self-imprisonment, self-bondage, due to one's mechanical
psychology, one's mechanical make-up. Here you have a very good
example of what the Work means practically on this side, but usually
we are so immersed in sleep or so identified with every typical mechanical
reaction, so much so that we always behave in exactly the same way
towards ever-recurring situations, continually lose force and remain
in our state of deep sleep, because you must remember that if you
wish to awaken you must find in what way you can save force and
store it up and no one can awaken unless he begins to accumulate force
and to store it up. And it is often dull and dead moments which take
force in everyone's life every day, these customary ways of taking daily
things through customary attitudes towards them that cause a constant
leakage of force.
816
Now it is a very good thing to think as an exercise that you are
taking to-day in an entirely new way. I say it is a good exercise in the
morning to try to take everything that happens, all the usual discords
and unpleasant tasks and so on, in an entirely new way, if you can,
for a short time. It gives you a glimpse of what work means and what
transformation means—that is, transforming your ordinary daily life
and taking it in a quite new way.
In connection with this example given above I was asked: Is this a
question of Self-Remembering or self-observation? Whenever you have
a double sense of the future and past meeting together in the present
moment it always has a quality of Self-Remembering. In this case it
was reached by uncritical self-observation which lifted the consciousness to a higher level—i.e. that of Self-Remembering or the third level
of consciousness. Now if you observe yourself critically you never reach
this level through self-observation. Why? Because you will always be
self-justifying, complaining, negative, and all the rest of it, which
belong to the second level of consciousness, the so-called waking state.
But if you can really observe yourself uncritically you will pass from
this complaining, unpleasant level to a quite new state of consciousness
and you will see yourself standing in Time. Now suppose that you can
be sufficiently awake to observe at a particular moment how you are
taking some situation, some event, and suppose that you can observe
yourself uncritically, that means that you can observe that part of
yourself that is taking things in this mechanical, ever-recurring way.
If the observing 'I' is really uncritical it begins to move towards
Real 'I' which is never critical. But if you are observing yourself
with an 'I' that belongs to a lower level—i.e. a critical 'I'—then you
will not reach the level of Self-Remembering. In other words, the
quality of your observation is not fine enough, and you will simply be
at that level at which you have to argue with other 'I's. Your best
'I's are uncritical 'I's, 'I's that never judge either you or other people.
Your worst 'I's are your fault-finders, your jealous, envious, malicious,
complaining 'I's. Through them how can you observe yourself uncritically? But through the pure feeling of the Work you can observe
yourself uncritically as a mere nobody—not as a ridiculous and absurd
creature, as of course we all are, without exception, because this would
be critical—but simply as a nobody, as nothing. And I remind you
here that unless we can realize our own nothingness we can get nowhere.
817
Quaremead, Ugley, December 1, 1945
WHERE WE LIVE PSYCHOLOGICALLY
Man is defined in the Work first of all by what he eats and what he
breathes and where he lives. Every living animal is defined in the same
way—namely, by what it eats, what it breathes, and where it lives. A
fish, for example, is different from a man in this respect because a fish
lives in the water and breathes in a quite different way from a man and
eats different food. The Work also teaches that in this great machine of
Organic Life everything eats everything else. The Work, in fact, says
that the whole Universe is based on the idea of eating and being eaten.
Just think for a moment, can any one of you live without eating something else? Let us take simply Organic Life itself—namely, this sensitive film which surrounds this small planet called the Earth. This
sensitive film is fed by the great energy of the Sun, to begin with, but
everything in Organic Life on this Earth exists only by eating something
else. Some of you have heard this idea before into which I am not
going further to-night. I will return to the opening phrase: Man is
defined in this Work by what he eats, what he breathes and where he
lives. Now let us take this idea psychologically and not literally. Let
me ask you: What do you eat psychologically? What do you breathe
psychologically? And where do you live psychologically? Supposing
you are very fond of eating negative emotions? Supposing you love
long, unhappy thoughts? Or supposing that you love hearing negative
stories, unpleasant rumours about other people? Psychologically some
people eat nothing but unpleasant impressions, unpleasant remarks.
They are attracted to unhappy, uneasy situations. They like unpleasant
things, they like to talk negatively. This is their food. Again, they
breathe in, psychologically speaking, not Truth, but false things, lies,
unpleasant things.
But what I want to speak to you about to-night is where you live.
In what part of yourself do you live? In what part of your psychological
country do you usually live? Let us once more try to understand
what one's psychology means as distinct from the external world of
space, for we should continually make this effort. Everyone has a
much greater psychological space or country in themselves than
they know in the physical sense. They may not have travelled round the
world, they may even know only their own little village, and yet
psychologically they inhabit a particular place which is exactly
correspondent with physical space and physical place. When you have
begun to observe yourself you begin to see that you have psychological
space in you as distinct from physical space. You begin to understand what it means that you may be in a very bad place in yourself
at any particular moment, just as you might be in a dark, evil street
full of robbers, gun-men and so on, in the external physical sense. It
takes a long time for us to understand that we can be in a dangerous
818
and evil place in ourselves and to realize this requires a great deal of
objective strength towards oneself. After a long time I began to have
a more objective relationship to myself in the sense that I began to
realize that at some moment or other I was in a very bad place in myself and surrounded by very bad 'I's—in fact, evil 'I's—and that I must
be very careful how to behave, just exactly as if I were in a very bad
slum surrounded by extremely evil-looking people. What is so extraordinary is that people do not notice that they have a much bigger
psychological country that they are living in than the external world
that they know. I was speaking the other day to someone about this
and this person said: "I do not understand what you mean by psychological country. Where is it? How do we find it?" It was impossible
for me to explain anything further in this particular case because the
person to whom I was speaking was extremely externally-minded and
saw only things outside and not things inside. That is, the world for
him was only what is registered by the senses and not what is registered
by self-observation. Now every devil and angel is already in you in this
psychological country to which you gain access through your own selfobservation. This enormous country, full of cities and deserts and
forests, peopled by all these devils and angels, is the country that we
have to learn about through self-observation. For we must move
about in it as intelligently and carefully as we move about in the external
world that we see revealed by our senses. If a man is attacked in some
slum people say: "Why do you go there? Why do you continue to
walk down these dangerous streets and meet these dangerous people?"
But we are so asleep, so dead to our own inner state, so unrecognisant
of what the Work is teaching us about this inner country in which we
are always in a certain place, that we only dimly understand the
parallel. After a time a man in the Work begins to know where he is
in his own psychological country, amongst what 'I's he is, and through
the light that comes with self-observation he begins to know when he
must shift his position.
Now the most useful forms of Self-Remembering are about this
inner psychological country of which we gradually become more aware
through personal work on ourselves. We learn to remember ourselves
in this inner country when, for example, we find ourselves for one
reason or another in a bad place in it. And so we learn what silence
means and what tact to ourselves means. Exactly the same things apply
to a psychological place as to a physical place—I mean, it is just
as if we are in a pretty tough spot in external space and know quite
well we must use silence and tact to escape. The great danger is that we
do not realize that we have a continual shifting of position in regard
to where we are living psychologically in ourselves and that as a
consequence a thing which was harmless yesterday is not necessarily
so to-day. If you do not understand about psychological space you can
understand about different 'I's in you. Which 'I's are nearest to you
at present? What are these 'I's like? You could ask yourself exactly
819
the same questions in regard to physical space, could you not—namely,
looking round you could say: "What kind of people am I amongst at this
moment? Do I care for them? Do I wish to be with them?" When your
relationship to your inner life, to your inner psychological space,
becomes as vivid and real as is your relationship to external space,
to visibly-seen things, then you may be quite sure that you begin to
understand the meaning of this Work. To which 'I's in you are you
going to consent and to which 'I's are you going to be extremely tactful
and to which 'I's are you going to play the part of avoiding them at
all costs? When the Psalmist said: "We have walked in unpleasant
places", I have thought that this defines so well the stage of a man
understanding that he has spent a long time in walking in unpleasant
places, in his own inner world.
So to return to this phrase that Man is defined by where he lives,
taking the whole definition as given at the beginning of this paper,
if we take it psychologically and not merely literally, it is a very good
question to ask yourself sometimes: "Where am I living in myself at
this moment?" Now, suppose you have never worked on yourself for a
week? Suppose you have swelled your internal accounts, or suppose
you are full of the idea of "if only". Now let me ask you: "In what
kind of a place are you living in your slums?" I suppose that a person
living in the slums of himself, in the lowest interpretation of everything,
must make effort to get out just as a person actually living in physical
slums who has the idea that he might better himself knows quite well
that he must make effort to escape from his physical position. It seems
to me to be exactly the same thing. Do you know your slums? Do you
agree with me that many people live very much in their slums—i.e.
in slums of their psychological country, of their psychological world ?
Take all the envies and jealousies and poor, mean, negative things that
go on in each of us. Do you think they are, in short, slums? I would
say from my observation of myself that they are exactly the slums.
Everything can be taken in the heaviest, most negative way without
the slightest trace of transformation. But this Work is about transforming one's life. It is about efforts that lift you above the level in which it is
so easy to live all one's life although one is dressed up outside in the
very reverse of slum-clothing. Yes, the Work begins with the slums.
Something valuable is there.
Now you will find, if you have reached a certain stage of self-observation, that in the turning wheel of inner experience you will return
again to your slums inevitably and here at this moment you have to
be most awake and make most inner effort. At another point you
find you do not have to make so much effort because you are not
living in a bad place in yourself. But there is always a certain point
in the turning wheel of your own psychology where you must be
exceptionally careful and most silent, most tactful, and most clever
with yourself to get out of this place as best you can without having
been robbed of everything. We have all got to realize this turning
820
wheel of our own psychology. I said something above about "if only".
Now suppose you eat—and let me remind you that Man literally is
defined as what he eats, what he breathes, and where he is—let us take
this phrase "if only". Is that good food to eat, psychologically speaking?
Suppose that I am eating all impressions on the basis of "if only"?
This faded food, this dead, negative food, will not make it possible for
me to transform anything in my Being. The attitude represented by
"if only" prevents work. But we can always work. We can always go
into another part of our psychological country if we observe and separate
from some typical habitual 'I's.
Quaremead, Ugley, December 8, 1945
ON OBEYING THE WORK
When you begin to obey this Work you cannot do as you like.
However, it takes us a very long time before this begins to become
clear. It is not something that can be learnt by heart or told you
by someone else but it is actually a growth of one's own experience.
It is of course connected with keeping one's aim. To act from one's
aim is to act without being identified, but, again, it takes us a long
time before we know what aim means. At first it is something that
We think about in words without seeing what these words mean. Aim
gradually becomes clearer to us as always having to do with selfchange. Now no self-change is possible if we always do what we like.
Let us put the matter a little differently. If we always do what is
pleasing to us and easy to do, no self-change is possible. The central
idea of the Work is self-change, and the central teaching of the Work
is that Man is an unfinished creation, a self-developing organism,
one whose only real task is to complete itself. If we do not grasp
this significance of the Work we shall never be able either to make
a right aim or to keep it in the right way. The force of the Work
will not help us. The Work cannot help us unless we are doing what
the Work is teaching. How, for instance, can the Work help us if we
never remember ourselves? Many people make aim that has nothing
to do with the Work or is not done in connection with any feeling of the
Work. Let us suppose my aim is to climb the highest mountain
in the world. Could this possibly be called a Work-aim? But suppose
you say that no one would have an aim of that kind now. Well, let us
say that a person makes a small aim to cook an excellent dinner.
There are so many ways in which that excellent dinner can be cooked
—I mean, psychological ways, not ordinary ways. Now suppose you
have made a big and real aim that you are going to try to remember
to act in life without identifying and that you are going to try to practise
821
this great Work-exercise at least several times a day. Then, of course, in
taking this small aim of cooking an excellent dinner in conjunction with
this general and real aim, it would really be one example and you would
have to cook it without being identified and if anything went wrong or
someone put in something wrong, you would have to separate from
those 'I's that will start to become negative. But it is very difficult
not to do everything personally and there is always that form of internal
considering which the Work stresses which consists in thinking that
even the weather itself is bad on purpose.
You can always tell when you are working by a curious feeling
which in a way can be compared with the feeling one used to have
on returning to school. You cannot quite have your own way and when
you are having your own way you are quite aware of it and not very
happy. A school in the Work-sense first of all gives you this feeling
externally, so to speak—although you are free to leave—but later on
this feeling must be in you without any surrounding school. Then you
will not do things personally in the same way as you formerly did. There
will, of course, always be two divisions of 'I's, two people, in you—one
who wishes the Work and one who does not—and the struggle between
these two will always continue because there must be strife at the
bottom of work. Work begins when a man starts to struggle with himself.
I said above that when you begin to obey this Work you cannot do as
you like. The Work is really Conscience; at first it is outside you; you
hear it speaking in the Work-teaching. Man has Conscience but it is
buried. This Conscience that the Work speaks about is the same in
everyone. When I first heard this it seemed to me extraordinary that
this was the case. How could Conscience be the same in everyone?
But when I reflected that the Work also teaches that Higher Centres
exist in everyone, only unheard, the idea did not seem so extraordinary.
Man having gone so deeply asleep has to be taught now from outside.
This Work is esoteric teaching from outside at first. If a man feels it
emotionally, if something in him responds to it, and finally if he persists
for a long time, he finds that the Work is in him as well as outside him.
Then he must obey the Work. He may not know for a long time how to.
But the intention must be there in him. And after a time he will be
shewn the way or the Work will find a way for him—often quite the
contrary to what he supposed.
All this depends on obeying the Work first of all through the mind
and the emotional thinking and finally with the Will as a whole—
namely, with the whole mass of the man. But this latter stage is far
from us at present. When the Work is in you in the above sense you
begin to know how to act in life with non-identifying. Some people
might call it acting impersonally but I do not agree with the use of this
word. You can act very personally without identifying. You remember
that we are all blinded with identifying, that we are all rendered deaf
and dumb by it, and that identifying is our most terrible enemy. Only
the Work has the strength to overcome this terrible power.
822
Quaremead, Ugley, December 22, 1945
THE PARABLE OF THE HORSE,
CARRIAGE AND DRIVER
PAPER I
In speaking of the inner state of a mechanical man, G. made many
analogies. On some occasions he compared the inner state of a man
to a Carriage, Horse and Driver—and he emphasized that it was very
important for us to think about what these three distinct things in
Man mean. The point of the analogy is that these three distinct things
are not in right relationship to one another. The Driver is not on the
box of the Carriage; the Horse is not properly fed, nor rightly harnessed
to the Carriage; and the Carriage itself is in a bad condition. "What,"
G. asked once, "is the reason of all this? The reason is that the Driver
is sitting in the public house spending his money on drink and giving
no food to the Horse and no proper care to the Carriage. In order to
change this state of affairs," G. said, "it is necessary that the Driver
receives a shock, to awaken him."
Now the interpretation of this analogy or parable can be approached
from many different sides, some of which have already been explained.
To-night I will take up more especially the point that the Driver after
realizing his state must eventually climb up on to the box of the Carriage
—that is, he must rise in his level to reach a place of control. But first
we must understand that it is possible to take the rousing of the Driver
in many steps. He must be shaken out of his drunken slumber, and then
he must stand up, and then move himself out of the sphere of the public
house, and then observe the Horse, and then the Carriage, and so on.
After attending to the Horse and Carriage he must climb on to the
box and finally take hold of the reins and start driving as best he can.
As you know, the parable goes on to say that if he does all this a fourth
factor may appear on the scene—i.e. the Master may be found sitting
in the Carriage and giving directions to the Driver as to where he must
go. But, it is added, the Master will never seat himself in the Carriage
unless the Driver is on the box and has begun to take hold of the reins
and has done what he could for both the Horse and the Carriage. This
parable is really about the whole object of the Work. The object of the
Work is to reach Real 'I' in oneself—through the long inner path through
oneself, through Self-Remembering and work on oneself. Real 'I'
is the Master in the parable. We are taught that as we are we have no
Real 'I' and have no inner stability and never know what we really
have to do. In our present state first one 'I' takes charge and then another 'I'. Our state is comparable to that represented in the parable
of the Tower of Babel. From that parable, apparently we once had
inner unity but something went wrong and multiplicity appeared—
namely, from being one we became many. In general, our Being is
823
defined in the Work as being characterized by multiplicity as distinct
from the Being of a Conscious Man. We are a crowd of different 'I's
pulling in different directions, all with their own forms of self-will,
and what we rather grandly call our will is nothing but the resultant
of all these different wills. So our task is to attain unity, and no single
'I' that we know or can observe at present has the strength to give us
this unity and arrange and subordinate all the 'I's into a whole.
We can however form substitutes for Real 'I' which, beginning with
Observing 'I', are called in ascending sequence of importance and power
Deputy-Steward and Steward. We are fortunate if we have a DeputySteward to look after our household affairs and still far more so if we
ever attain to that level where we have Steward controlling affairs.
But beyond Steward lies Master or Real 'I', the reaching of which is
the chief aim of all. You will see in the parable of the Horse, Carriage
and Driver that there is no chance of our attaining to the level where
Master or Real 'I' exists or of hearing his voice and receiving his
instructions as to what we have really to do with our lives unless we
first of all waken out of the sleep, out of the stupor that we exist in,
which is represented by the Driver sitting in a drunken sleep in the
public house. The first task then is to awaken the Driver for unless this
has taken place the Horse cannot be attended to, nor the Carriage.
The Carriage can be said to represent the body and people may think
that they can start only with the body but this is wrong—in fact,
it may put the Driver into a deeper sleep. What is the method of this
Work in regard to the awakening of the Driver and the nature of the
shock? If the Driver realizes that he is in a drunken sleep this may be
sufficient to make him try to wake up. With what is he drunk? One
thing is imagination. We are drunk with imagination. I have heard it
said in the Work that at one time humanity on Earth was going forward
too quickly in proportion to the rate of development of the Moon and
the Earth and had to be held back. The Overseer called the Chief
Engineer and explained to him the difficulty. The result was that Man
was given imagination. Then from that time everything went on without difficulty. The imaginary began to replace the real. As you know,
the Work speaks about Imaginary 'I'. Man believes that he has Real
'I' as he is, just as he imagines he is fully conscious. He believes that
he is a real individual, unchanging, permanent, with full will and full
consciousness. He has no Real 'I' but his imagination creates Imaginary
'I' in him. He hides from himself his extreme inner weakness by means
of imagination. Now if a man realizes that he has no Real 'I', no Real
Will, that all he has felt and thought about himself in this respect can
simply be called Imaginary 'I', then he is beginning to awaken from the
drunken sleep in the public house where he spends his money in
imagining. This is one side of the position of Man from the esoteric
point of view. We remind ourselves here that the problem of esotericism
is always the same—namely, how to awaken Man from his state of
sleep and make him realize he is asleep. Esoteric teaching takes Man
824
not only as not yet conscious, but drunken with imagination and wasting
his force in falsity and violence. You will then see the necessity for
beginning with self-observation—the observation of one's sleep.
All forms of teaching are quite useless unless the Driver awakens.
You can see the reason why. A man may be given some teaching while
he is drinking in the public house and this teaching will go into his
imagination and increase his state of sleep. If he is told that he is an
angel in Heaven he will believe that he is and drink more than ever.
Certainly this will increase his state of sleep, his state of imagination.
Many good people indulge in this form of drink. Unfortunately there
are many sorts of teaching that have this effect as their object—i.e.
pseudo-teachings that only increase imagination. In the Work, however,
we are given nothing to feed our imagination about ourselves but quite
the contrary. I have found nothing flattering in this teaching. There is
nothing flattering, for example, in being told that we are machines
that have no Real 'I', that we are nothing but pictures of ourselves,
that what we call 'I' is nothing but imagination, that we have no Real
Will, that we are a mass of contradictions which we do not notice owing
to having so many buffers and different forms of padding, that we
are not conscious yet, and so on. It is not pleasant to be told that we
are mechanical, just machines, and that we do nothing consciously.
But teaching of this kind will not tend to prolong our sleep in the public
house if we value and apply it to ourselves. When we realize, even to a
small degree, that we are mechanical, and that this machine, in which
hovers Imaginary 'I', does everything—we experience a shock. This
shock may be nothing more at first than an uneasy feeling that we are
not quite what we supposed hitherto. Yet even this feeling is the
beginning of awakening and it will increase if nourished because it is
truth. All awakening has a sour taste—like going back to school. Now
when you begin to awaken from your sleep to a small extent you are
beginning to remember yourself—not your Imaginary 'I', but something
deeper, which eventually leads to Real 'I', which is our truth. The
power of imagination however is so great that people do not wish to
wake up and experience even momentarily the harsh taste that comes
with a moment of greater consciousness. They try to drown it, even
though their suffering and unhappiness in ordinary life-affairs are very
great. You can see people who are plagued by one thing or another,
from which they could escape if they woke up, deliberately preferring
to be plagued rather than face awakening and standing up and leaving
the public house and taking their place eventually on the box of their
own carriage.
You know that it is said about sacrifice in this Work that, as we are,
we have nothing to sacrifice, nothing worth sacrificing, save one thing
—namely, our negative states, our negative suffering, our depressions
and songs of misery. We can only sacrifice what we love. Our pictures
of ourselves cause us to ascribe to ourselves much that does not exist,
except in imagination. One cannot sacrifice something that exists
825
only in imagination. But we so love our suffering, our sadness, and
disappointments, our negative states, that here we have something to
sacrifice so that the direction of our love can change. When I first
heard this I thought it a very strange viewpoint and one that did not
apply to me until I began to observe myself and then I began to see it
was true. You notice how people intoxicate themselves with their own
suffering and cannot listen to anyone else's and are always dwelling on
their suffering, either openly or secretly, commiserating with themselves. This dwelling on suffering is a form of imaginative drunkenness.
It is a fascinating form of drunkenness on which the Driver can spend
a great deal of money. Do you know your own typical public house
song of misery—often actually sung in an actual public house?
In order to awaken, the Driver must begin to think. The ideas of
this Work fall on us at first as from a great distance. We hear a voice
saying things over and over again. We do not notice much of what is
said. We are dreaming of other things or waiting for our little accumulators to fill up again, so that we can run around once more as before.
After a time something falls on the ear of the sleeping Driver. He hears
something and stirs and perhaps looks up for a moment. "Yes," he
thinks, "that is quite true." He has begun to think. If things go well
with him his hearing improves and instead of drinking all the time, he
sometimes thinks and sometimes merely drinks. He is still in the public
house. His Horse is still starving. The harness is in bits and pieces and
the Carriage unrepaired and unpainted. But he is not yet aware of
all this. His thinking is not yet strong enough to become emotional
and get him on his feet and make him go to the door and look for
himself at his inner state.
Now I will skip several steps in the parable and come to the idea
that the Driver must climb on to the box. To drive he must ascend
above the level of the ground. But before this can happen he must say:
"I will drive." That is a decision and it is followed by having to go up.
Now here is something very strange, because actually he has to go down.
He cannot drive from Imaginary 'I', from False Personality, from anything in him that thinks it can do. He will never be able to drive from
pride or vanity, but only from what is lowest in him in this respect—from what is most simple and humble and genuine and sincere. So to
go up he must go down. When he says: "I will drive", if he thinks he
can do it himself and for himself, he will break reins, smash wheels and
fall off. This decision "I will drive" must be said with a delicacy of
understanding that implies the existence of something else being necessary. For where are you going to drive? You will have to be told and
then obey and so you are not the Driver in the imperious sense of the
man who imagines he can do and merely does what he pleases. To do in
the Work-sense ultimately means to obey the Master who may suddenly
appear in the Carriage.
826
December 29, 1945
THE PARABLE OF THE HORSE,
CARRIAGE AND DRIVER
PAPER II
We spoke last time about the parable of the Horse, Carriage and
Driver, which is one of the parables of the Work dealing with Man's
inner situation. You will remember that the Driver in this parable is
sitting in the public house and the Horse and Carriage are outside
and both in a bad state. The first thing that must happen is that the
Driver must awaken from his drunken sleep and attend to the Horse
and the Carriage and eventually climb on to the box and take hold of
the reins. Then it is said that he may find the Master sitting in the
Carriage behind him directing him in which direction to drive. In our
last conversation about this parable I dwelt more especially on the
point that the Driver has to climb up to the box and indicated that he
cannot drive the Horse and Carriage from the level of the ground.
From this level he cannot control anything. At the same time I said
that a man might come to the point where he says: "I will drive."
This happens when through long observation of himself he begins to
see that he must do something with himself and can be no longer carried
along in the idea of his mechanical life. But although he makes this
decision: "I will drive", yet he is far from the possibility of driving.
Further stages are necessary and further experiences with himself. His
attention will be drawn to certain sides of himself. In that internal
communion with oneself that comes from the growing need of the Work
and the growing new knowledge of oneself gained from self-observation,
he will perceive in many ways that he must climb up in himself before
he can drive—that is, reach another level—otherwise he is bound to
fail continually and probably simply give up trying to do anything with
himself in the way of self-change. In other words, he has to climb up to
the level of Self-Remembering because no one can drive his Horse
and Carriage unless he has something of that intensity of Consciousness
and Self-Awareness that belongs to the Third State of Consciousness to
which the Work points. What is it that the Work says is the most
important thing for us to practise? It says that we must become more
conscious and, in fact, begin to reach the level of Self-Remembering,
Self-Awareness and Self-Consciousness. Some people, not understanding the Work, although in contact with it, see that life goes anyhow, that
it is a tragedy, a complete muddle, a veritable Babel. And having got to
this point they perhaps become negative, without comprehending that
this is exactly what the Work teaches about life. They simply stick,
not seeing the Work, but only the chaos of life. The Work teaches that
a man must see that everything does happen in life and realize that it
is because Man is not properly conscious. The Work constantly empha827
sizes that life is mechanical and that this is due to Man himself being
asleep, not properly conscious. Yes, but the Work adds that the practice
of this teaching is to make an individual man more conscious when he
has realized all this and it gives him instructions as to how to become
more conscious and so reach another level of himself. When a man
observes himself over a long period sincerely he becomes startled and
through this a little more conscious of himself. If he does this with a
continual renewal of the meaning of the ideas taught in this Work he
will become still more conscious even though it is painful, and begin
to reach a level in himself where he can begin in the right way to
control lower sides in himself, smaller 'I's in mechanical parts of centres
that have hitherto controlled him. It is this rising up in oneself from
mechanical death, which one mistook for life, that is the object of the
Work. Ordinarily speaking, we live at a low level of ourselves. For
example, we live far too much in small unpleasant 'I's, in dull, stupid,
mechanical parts of centres, in silly dreams, and so we too contribute
to the general sleep of humanity. Yes, we then help to keep the
world-sleep. It is exactly wakening out of the sleep of humanity in
which one is sharing that is referred to in the parable of the Driver in
the public house asleep in dreams and illusions about himself. For a
man to wake up he must begin to cease to have illusions and false
imagination, and so here comes in the acute work done from selfobservation that separates a man from himself and makes it possible
to leave the public house.
Let us continue to talk about the stage where the Driver must
climb on to the box. Understand that this is not a sharply divided
stage, but a gradual process is meant of trial and error. Everything is
done by order in the Work—by the Law of Seven. For example, he
makes a definite aim and keeps on failing. He learns gradually, but in
order, that he cannot keep his aim because he goes to sleep continually
and this is because he gets down amongst small 'I's that know nothing
about his aim or the Work. He does not think enough. I use this word
deliberately—i.e. that he does not think enough. Here thinking is
both remembering and thinking. Thinking and remembering interlock.
You have to defend your aim by pumping truth into it as you have seen
it. You have to call together in your understanding all truths concerning your aim—I mean, Work-ideas and insights—otherwise your aim
will deviate. It will then only become a vague memory instead of being
a constantly renewed source of truth to you. All truths of this Work
will fight for you when you have got into a more or less central position
in yourself in regard to your aim. But you must continually re-visit,
re-stimulate yourself in regard to these truths and insights. The
Work fights for you only when you engage with it mentally through
emotional acknowledgement. I said recently that if the ideas or
truths of this Work stood round you and transmitted their force you
would be able to do. Owing to our limited consciousness and our level
of mind which only holds one thing at a time, this is not possible. It
828
is possible at a higher level, however—that is, light increases as our
level is raised. With regard to everything bad and wrong in you which
you may have noticed in action as well as in thought, the ideas of
this Work, if perceived as true, will fight for you. Only in that way
can what is wrong and bad and unnecessary in you be changed. You
cannot do it yourself. You go to war. Work-'I's will fight with
mechanical 'I's if you go on giving them the force of the ideas of
this Work and renewing it always. It is they that fight for you, these
Work-'I's, contacting the Work-ideas. For example, when you are
negative a Work-idea suddenly comes into your mind, and you find
it possible to fight with that negative state—or it simply vanishes.
This is an example of the Work fighting in you and for you. That is
why valuation of the Work is so important. It is useless to think
you can do all this yourself and by yourself. This thing that you
call yourself is useless and as often as not it is your worst self, your
most mechanical, habitual self, which cannot possibly lead you anywhere and will never withstand any temptation to sleep. Everyone
who has felt this Work deeply and over a sufficient length of time
has already other selves that can fight. But we try to fight ourselves
with ourselves—our habitual selves—and not with our new selves.
When we are negative we try to fight our negative state with this
thing "ourself". And often we make aims when we are negative—that
is, when we are at an even lower level than our ordinary "ourself" is.
Now when a man is in a negative state he mechanically thinks
lies. The truth of the ideas of the Work does not reach him. But it
is this that can fight for you. So when you are negative it is important
to try to think the truth, by an effort. A negative state, allowed
by inner slackness to persist, drives away the Work and all its possible
influence on you. When a man is in a negative state the negative
part of his Emotional Centre induces a current of lies that flows
through his Intellectual Centre. Negative states are only supported
by lies in the Intellectual Centre. You cannot think a lie if you are
in a good state. It is usually the same lies that are brought up, if you
observe yourself closely. When a negative state in the Emotional Centre
induces lies in the Intellectual Centre it means that wrong connections
in thought and memory are made, often traceable very far into the past,
so that in consequence they have become habits of thinking which have
never been challenged by yourself. This is a bad state to be in. People
begin to die from such lies. In these lies that are excited by negative
states in the Intellectual Centre important things are left out and
unimportant things are over-emphasized, or what is pure imagination
is mingled with what is real, especially with the aid of pride and vanity
and suspicion which have never been corrected, and many other selfinjurious distortions are made, due to blaming and to internal accountmaking in general. All this remains incredible to one, unless one
catches oneself through self-observation in the act of enjoying these
lies. In this inner tangle many live most of their lives without making
829
any attempt to deal strongly with all this dirt and mess laid down in
their psychic life. Now there can be no question of its being possible
to climb up on to the box as long as one is full of all this dirt and
mess of lies or evasions or distortions of the truth which form a kind
of midden within us. You will try to climb up on to the box full of this
mess of lies and, since you always feel yourself as the leading person in
yourself, you will always feel these habitual lies in yourself which can
only be annihilated by a new revelation of yourself coming from the
fuller light of consciousness, belonging to the Third State of Consciousness—that is, to Self-Awareness. This is where the light will cure you.
The light of consciousness will make it impossible for these habitual
lies to cling so closely and to form so large a part of the customary feeling
of yourself whereby you have hitherto recognized yourself.
So mounting the box is obviously a long process and, as I said, there
is an order in it. The question is of course this: "What mounts the
box?" If a mass of habitual, ingrained lies mounts the box nothing
will happen. You can in no wise say that the Driver has mounted the
box, because the Driver must be purified by the Work. When he is
about to mount he comes to a definite test. Is he really sufficiently
awakened yet? Is he really prepared to drive although perhaps he
may have said: "I will drive." He may get up to the box in imagination
but in this case he is still asleep and he will fail. Then he may persuade
himself that he has done his very best and feel self-pity and give up for
the time being. But he has as yet done nothing really. He has not faced
himself with himself and with the difficulties in his Being. So the whole
thing remains purely imagination. He is making effort in imagination
but he is not making real effort. People can take the whole of this Work
in their imagination and never make any real effort whatsoever. Now
when you make a real effort or a relatively real effort, you never become
negative when you fail. This is a sign. Your failure makes you think
more and remember more. But when you make an effort in imagination,
an imaginary effort, not a real effort, you become negative very quickly
and pass into your gallery of self-pity with all its ancestral portraits.
Now the outer is like the inner. If you go to a carpenter's shop and
pretend to saw a piece of wood you are making an imaginary effort.
You may handle lots of tools and make a noise as if you were working
but you are really doing nothing and you will get no result. It is
exactly the same thing in the inner psychological world. You have got
really to make an effort, as far as is in your power, in your psychological
world. Take as it were your self-satisfaction which is the bane of some
in this Work—that is, the worst thing in them. No one who is filled
with self-satisfaction can possibly do this Work and any idea of their
climbing up on to the box is quite out of the question. Why? Because
a self-satisfied man or woman feels that he or she is already on the box.
Actually they are still fast asleep in the public house spending all their
money in generous forms of imagination about themselves. However,
when we begin to realize practically and by direct insight and by mental
830
perception that we are nothing and cannot do, we are very close to being
able to get on the box. So one goes down to go up. But no one will ever
realize his own nothingness—I mean, genuinely and not theoretically,
save through the power of this Work. And for a very good reason. To
realize one's own nothingness in a real way without having this Work to
hold on to might easily destroy a man or turn him into a mass of negative
emotion. But to realize increasingly, and in order of experiences, one's
own nothingness has nothing to do with negative emotion. Quite the
contrary, it can begin to transmit the Work. Yet one does not climb
up to the box simply by realizing one's own nothingness but by a double
and paradoxical process in which one has to make effort on the one
side and yet know on the other side that one can do nothing without
help.
Quaremead, Ugley, January 12, 1946
THE UNOBSERVED SIDE OF OURSELVES
Recently we had a conversation once more about this dark side of
ourselves. I explained before that this means the side of ourselves
that we do not know or do not accept and that the object of self-knowledge by the method of self-observation was to bring this not yet known
side of ourselves into the light of consciousness. The whole object of
self-knowledge is to make more conscious our knowledge of ourselves.
The idea is that when you have many things in you that you do not
know and do not accept—i.e. things that are not conscious to you yourself—then these things complicate your life very much and cause all
sorts of situations which would be avoided through self-knowledge.
In general it can be said that we put this unknown or unconscious side
of ourselves into other people or, to use a term in modern psychology,
we project this side of ourselves and see it in other people. For example,
we see them as liars, or unfaithful, or mean, or untrustworthy, and so
on, in relation to our own qualities in this respect. The Work says, in
regard to this, that we live in a very small part of ourselves. This means
that our consciousness extends to a very small part of ourselves. Such a
situation makes us very badly related to other people, to life and to
ourselves. The idea of this Work is to enlarge consciousness. We have,
we are told, to become far more conscious to ourselves through direct
self-observation, so that all sorts of narrow pictures that we have of
ourselves are destroyed and we begin to live in a larger edition of ourselves. We can take it as a general rule in the Work that when we are
up against someone else we may be sure that that is the very thing we
have to work on in ourselves. This gives us an entirely different orientation and in my opinion it is the beginning of real work. The thing you
831
criticize so much in other people is something lying in the dark side of
yourself that you do not know or acknowledge. You only see this dark
side, this unconscious, unknown side of yourself, reflected into other
people so that it is always their fault and never your fault. Everyone
lives in a very small consciousness, a very petty world of self-reactions,
of personal reactions, and this small space that they live in is full of all
sorts of sensitivenesses. As you will admit, some people live in this small
part of themselves in which consciousness is confined to a small area of the
totality of their psyche. What keeps us all in this small consciousness
is the action of buffers, of pictures of ourselves, of fixed opinions, of
negative attitudes. When we are in such a condition the dark side
of ourselves is very great, but when the light of self-observation is
thrown into this dark side, consciousness of ourselves increases through
self-knowledge, and after a time we begin to feel differently from what
we used to feel. The centre of gravity of 'I' in us begins to change. In
other words, Imaginary 'I', this 'I' that we are always serving and keep
going, which is not ourselves at all, begins to be dissolved. We find that
we are nothing like what we imagined and as this takes place so do our
relations to other people expand. Instead of living in a narrow world
of prejudices, of violent likes and dislikes, owing to the expansion of
consciousness in ourselves we find a larger relationship with other
people. This is due to a growth of consciousness by the method of
uncritical observation which is the basis of the whole Work on its
practical side. The result is that this sensitive bundle of personal reactions, this continually being upset and hurt, this inability to meet any
criticism from others, begins to disappear, and we enter a larger world.
We become more universal. We no longer feed our pictures of ourselves
as we did. We no longer think of ourselves in the same exclusive way,
but begin to realize our own helplessness, so we can endure the helplessness of other people. Now the Work says we must endure one
another's unpleasant manifestations. But it is impossible to endure
one another's unpleasant manifestations in the right sense of the
meaning of the word unless we see our own unpleasant manifestations
and know them and accept them. This destroys illusions about
ourselves. Unless you accept your fault-finding side you will always
be negative because this sensitive bundle of personal reactions surrounded by the darkness of yourself that you do not know or acknowledge will be the chief thing that you meet life with. And it will be
something that is completely unadapted to life, something incomplete,
inadequate, that will cause you misery all through your life unless you
correct it by conscious work on yourself. Your little personal ego-world
will be upset at every moment and you will have no strength for life
and no endurance unless you meet this dark side by conscious recognition and realize that everything that you are so critical of in others is
expressing itself in you all the time but is not yet included in your
consciousness of yourself. So you can see why the Work lays such stress
on this Imaginary 'I' that people live in. Suppose you criticize a man
832
who has made conscious to himself a considerable part of this dark
side. That is to say, this man has brought up into his consciousness
by his own work many sides of himself that he never realized existed in
him, and has accepted them. Will such a man bear criticism more
easily than a person who is still living in pictures of himself and has never
really faced himself by direct observation? I am quite sure that if a
man through the power of this Work really observes himself, really
notices when he criticizes and blames others, and always brings it down
to something in himself that he had not recognized, such a man will
be far more balanced and therefore far more capable of enduring the
next step in inner development. So many anxieties would go, so many
illnesses would disappear, so many emotional crises would vanish, so
many storms in tea-cups would cease to exist. You are accused, for
example, of being a liar. You furiously defend yourself, you practise
all the arts of self-justifying—which, I may remind you, is one of the
specific things we have to work on—and an immense uproar results.
Of course you are a liar. But if you are always going to keep your
lying out of your conscious sphere and refuse to know it and refuse to
acknowledge it, how can you accept it? You are always defending yourself against yourself, in order to keep your Imaginary 'I' going, your
imagination of what you are. But suppose you have made this dark
side far more conscious and you are accused of being a liar, you will
not then react from your bundle of sensitive personal reactions, or
from a picture of yourself, because you know quite well that you also
are a liar and that you often lie. So you will accept criticism without
changing colour. Many things are said in the Work about realizing
our own nothingness. It was said at some time or other that a man or a
woman in the Work must come to the point at which they realize their
own nothingness before they can take a step further. What does it
mean to be something? I will try to explain to you what I understand by
this. You feel, for example, that you are broadminded and tolerant.
I think a little real self-observation and remembering yourself will shew
you that you are not and that under some circumstances you are very
intolerant and extremely narrow-minded. Now this recognition that
you are sometimes intolerant and narrow-minded will neutralize the
picture that you have of yourself that you are always tolerant and
broad-minded. The result will be that you will feel that you are
nothing in this respect. You then cease to have in yourself aims about
being something. You will no longer go about saying: "Thank God, I
am broad-minded and tolerant," because you will remember, through
the memory that Observing 'I' has laid down in you, so many occasions
on which you were the reverse, so instead of being something artificial
through buffers, you will become nothing in regard to this special quality
on which you prided yourself. You will learn, in other words, not to
trust this idea that you have of yourself. It is not a moral issue that
we are concerned with here but a broadening of consciousness. Selfobservation is like a ray of light that penetrates the darkness inside us.
833
The result of this ray of light is to bring into consciousness the unknown
and unaccepted sides of ourselves. This softens everything in us and
takes away a great deal of our violence. We all have to overcome in
ourselves the violent man and the violent woman because all violence
is due to lack of consciousness. If you can see another as you see yourself you will never be violent towards him or her. You will notice that
you are only violent when you think you are not like the other person,
that you are not such a brute or a beast or a liar and so on. This onesidedness makes violence.
At a recent conversation one person said: "When you feel violent
towards a person and make an effort not to feel violent the next time
you see the person, you find that he or she seems to have changed.
Can this be that you have changed—not the other person?" Yes, this
is quite right. By becoming more conscious in the act of violence you
have not reacted mechanically and so you yourself have changed a little.
But the supreme change comes when you can see that what you are
violent about is something in yourself that you do not accept. Then
if you can keep that conscious you will never be violent to the other
person, which, in the real sense of the word, is sympathy. The real
meaning of sympathy is feeling with the other person. But you cannot
feel with another person unless your own feelings are conscious to you.
Sometimes in private Work-talks people discover that they both have
been through the same experience. This is sympathy. But sympathy in
the sentimental sense is useless and it always contains a grain of conceit and patronage. If you want to help anyone in this Work you must
feel at a lower level than they are through your own self-knowledge.
Now another person said in a recent conversation: "I found it difficult
to find the same thing in myself that makes me violent towards other
people, until I began to see that it might take a different form." Yes,
this is a very good observation, especially when you rather pride yourself on something that you have a picture of yourself as being or doing
and you find that someone else does not satisfy you in this respect and
get violent with them as a result. In that case your violence comes from
unrecognized, unacknowledged sides of yourself which are very close
to what you pride yourself on. Let me try to explain this more fully.
If you are a very careful person and pride yourself on it you may get
violent with a person whom you do not think careful according to your
standards, but you will always find that you are not careful in the way
that you imagine you are and that there are many gaps in your so-called
carefulness which you project into other people and blame them for.
You may be sure that you are acting from a picture here and not from
self-knowledge and that your picture may have had a justification
from your point of view, but yet it does not correspond to the truth
because no picture ever does. You may be careful but you also imagine
that you are careful and your imagination prevents you from seeing how
careless you are often about very important matters. A man, for
instance, may pride himself on being reliable and blame people for
834
not being reliable, and even blame them violently, without seeing that
he is not reliable in many other ways and that the reliability is a picture
reinforced by imagination based on a fact. As soon as you think you are
good at something and your pride and vanity enter this idea that you are
good at something, you will always find that you are most sensitive
here and most liable to become violent. In other words, you are being
something. If you could see all the mistakes and blunders that you make
yourself, if you could see your contradictions, if you could become
conscious of your failures, in regard to what you think you are good at,
you would no longer be sensitive or violent but tolerant and at the
same time would have more understanding. Sometimes people cannot
allow that they are not good at things because of a certain inner
weakness in them. What is this inner weakness due to? It is due to
this unacknowledged side, the dark side, which, as it were, contains,
amongst other things, all that they are not willing to accept. You
may be good at a thing, but you must also acknowledge gradually,
especially as you get older and need a wider consciousness, that you
are not good at it at the same time and realize, in short, that you are
not what you thought. Then you no longer identify in the way you did
and you become simpler inside. This letting in of the other side, of the
dark or not observed side, does not weaken you, but really strengthens
you. Someone asked: "Is it bad, the dark side?" You must understand
that everything you do not acknowledge appears at first sight bad. It is
the devil because the devil is always what is unknown, unacknowledged
or not understood. If someone had invented the radio a few centuries
ago he would have been burned as an agent of the devil. The dark side
does not mean anything evil in itself. It means simply that it is evil
to you, with your present estimation of yourself. It is evil to you,
because when you admit it into your consciousness your present estimation of yourself will change. The result will be that you will be much
better than you were before. You will be much better because your
present estimation of yourself kept up by imagination, and by buffers,
and by pictures, and by continual lying, has been weakened, and you
have entered a larger world of consciousness. You should not think of
the dark side as evil except to your Imaginary 'I' which is one's worst
evil. If your Imaginary 'I' is full of imagination about what you are,
and if this imagination becomes destroyed by admitting what is antagonistic to you, you will begin to lose this wrong, sensitive Imaginary
'I', and your consciousness will broaden out and you will cease to be
what you imagine yourself to be and move a step towards Real 'I'.
All the Work is against Imaginary 'I' with which each one of us faces
life so inadequately. The teaching of the Work sets out to destroy
the power of Imaginary 'I' but at first everything that threatens Imaginary 'I' seems to be very evil—in fact, the devil. That is why I think
it was once said in the Work: "The devil is also necessary." So many
people identify themselves with God without any justification and even
imagine that they have intercourse with God continually. All this
835
belongs to Imaginary 'I' and in such cases God has indeed to take the
aspect of the devil and destroy this imagination, these pictures, these
phantasies, this self-merit, and all this nonsense that the Work attacks so
strongly in each of us.
Now for practical work I would suggest once more that you really
observe yourself when you are critical or violent towards another
person in the Work and turn the whole thing round the opposite way
and try to find in yourself what it is that you are critical and violent
about in the other person. This will make your dark, unobserved side
more conscious to you because you may be certain that if you are very
critical and violent about someone else it is simply a projection of what
is in you, in this dark—i.e. unconscious—side of yourself, the side that
you do not know about yet, the side you have not yet observed, the
side that is to become the object of your self-knowledge. Let me remind
you here that self-observation is a very clean dry light and that it
will brook no falsehood and will give you no self-satisfaction at first.
Let me remind you also that if you are negative towards someone else,
no matter what is the external cause, the fact that you are negative is
your own fault from the Work point of view. We have to squeeze
negative emotion out of ourselves like wringing out washing. It is you
yourself who have to deal with this negative state, quite apart from the
external exciting causes, and here the whole object and meaning of the
Work comes in. If you have the strength of the Work, little can touch
you from without except when you are asleep for too long. It is a sign.
But you can always right the state by work and understanding. Everyone has difficulties in this Work with everyone else. Do not think that
my mission is necessarily to decrease these difficulties. Everyone is work
for someone else. Just imagine what would happen if we were to be all
sweet outside and hissing like snakes inside. No, we have got to work
in regard to one another and not expect ideal people or surroundings.
This is the second line of the Work—work in connection with other
people. It is always my fault if I am negative, whatever the external
situation. Does this give a different centre of gravity at once from the
life centre of gravity? I have to work. And I can work if I will. And
I have to take my life as work and work on my life. So there must be
no "if only". I remember some people saying in the early Work:
"If only we had much nicer people in the Group." But the Group,
whatever it may be, is simply a general sample of life and that is exactly
the sphere in which we all have to do our work in connection with
others. It is well to realize this deeply because it lightens the Work
through acceptance.
836
Quaremead, Ugley, January 19, 1946
ON PUTTING FEELING OF 'I' INTO THE WORK
We spoke recently about the Driver mounting the box of the
Carriage. It has often been said in the Work that unless a man believes
in Greater Mind it is impossible to do this Work. The Work teaches
that there is a Conscious Circle of Humanity. The Conscious Circle
of Humanity always through the ages has tried to awaken the Mechanical
Circle of Humanity. But it cannot do this by compulsion. You may
remember the idea of Man, one of the great sign-posts in the Work.
The Work says that Man is created a self-developing organism, but to
develop he must believe in Greater Mind. As you have probably
already noticed, Nature, the external world, does not tell you anything.
It is neutral. You can come to one conclusion or another about
Nature. You can say God exists or you can equally well say that God
does not exist. Why is there not clear evidence of Greater Mind? It
was once said that suppose God were floating overhead on a cloud it
would destroy the whole idea of God, who is invisible, and a spirit
that only Truth finds within us. People would have to believe in God.
People would be compelled by the evidence of their outer senses to
acknowledge the existence of the Higher. But since Man is created a
self-developing organism, this would destroy his meaning. In other
words, we have to come to our own conclusions through our own individual thinking. A man can only develop in the esoteric sense through
his own individual understanding by work on his knowledge and Being.
Otherwise he could not be self-developing. I have often thought how
disappointing it would be to draw your bedroom curtains in the
morning and see God hovering overhead on some brazen cloud staring
at you. And you would feel far more unbelief than ever before. We
are left in a kind of freedom to choose for ourselves and find our
way to the meaning of our own existence. The realization that Greater
Mind exists is an internal process—a way. As you know, a sign of
Being is the possession of Magnetic Centre. A man who has Magnetic
Centre has the feeling that there is something else apart from external
values, but the idea of Greater Mind will not thereby exist in him. For
example, such a man may become aware that there are two great streams
of literature in life, one the ordinary stream, including the newspapers,
Financial Times, Sporting News, murders, politics, and so on, and
another that is remote from all this and apparently speaks about something quite different—as the Gospels, for instance. But he will not
thereby understand about Greater Mind or Conscious Humanity. Now
we understand that the Conscious Circle of Humanity cannot compel
Man to believe, owing to the nature of the case, and the conditions
under which Man is born. You cannot force a self-developing organism.
If you study the Ray of Creation—and people should think about it
more—you will understand that the Will of the Absolute only reaches
837
this Earth through a number of increasing laws and influences—
through an increasing machinery. We in our position in the Ray of
Creation are immensely far from the Absolute. We are under 48 orders
of laws with their conflicting influences and meanings. It was once said
that if the Absolute were to manifest itself directly the whole of the
Ray of Creation would be destroyed and that it would be like playing a
game of cards in which suddenly all the rules of the game were destroyed. As a result the whole game would vanish. When we speak of
Greater Mind we mean at least that there exist Intelligences greater
than ours comparable, in comparison with ours, to Divine Intelligence.
The Ray of Creation is full of this meaning. There is higher and higher
meaning, a ladder of Intelligence. If a man is blind to this—to the
Ray—his higher parts of Centres, the emotional and intellectual parts
which conduct his meaning, will never awaken. His eyes will be on the
ground. On the other hand, if he has a right Magnetic Centre and has,
say, already distinguished between the two classes of literature of which
we have spoken, and especially if he feels that this life cannot be explained in terms of itself but must have some other interpretation on
some other level of meaning, then he is on the way to perceive for himself, by inner perception, the existence of Greater Mind. And in
consequence of this perception that Greater Mind exists he is capable
himself of receiving with right valuation the teachings that eventually
originate in Greater Mind.
As you know, we live in a very small part of our centres—we live
in the basement of the house in which we psychologically exist. It is
said in the Work that Man is the wrong way up. It is also said in
regard to the bodies of Man, that he works the wrong way round. If
we turn our eyes down to the ground like animals and look only downwards to the external world and interpret everything only according
to our sense-evidence, we are thinking the wrong way round. We are
taking the view that Nature creates herself. How could that be? We
then think that matter makes mind. This is Plato's definition of a
materialist. He is upside down. The Ray of Creation shews us that the
Mind of the Absolute creates the successive condensations of matter.
It teaches us that we live in a created Universe. This belief turns a
man the right way up.
I will make a brief comment about the feeling of 'I' in this Work—
that is, of 'I' being in the Work. Eventually Work can become stronger
than life—Work-'I' stronger than life-'I'. What the Work gradually
lays down in one can become stronger eventually than what life has
laid down and can control it. Then one is the right way round—that is,
one is not driven from the wrong end. You remember that this idea is
clearly represented in the diagram of the four possible bodies of Man,
called first, second, third and fourth.
838
Let us suppose a man attains to this level of development and that
Real 'I' or Master directs him. Then he works in the direction 4, 3, 2, 1.
An ordinary man is worked from the other end and in place of organized
bodies 2, 3 and 4 there is nothing formed in him and he is not in touch
with Real 'I'—in fact, he is in the position of the man in the public
house. The question I will put is: Do you think a man who does not
feel the existence of Greater Mind can ever attain to Real 'I' in himself?
Can he reach a higher level of himself if he believes there is nothing
higher? There is one thing quite definite that can be experienced in the
Work—that is, a change in the feeling of 'I'. No one can change
themselves without change in the feeling of themselves. This means a
change in the feeling of 'I'—of what they feel as 'I' and say 'I' to.
But do you think any change possible without believing in Greater
Mind?
I want you all to think for a practical exercise about all the Diagrams that indicate something higher, to go over them in your minds.
Quaremead, Ugley, January 26, 1946
NOTE ON THE EFFECT OF EARLY IMPRESSIONS
Our earlier impressions tend to have a stronger effect than later
ones. This can produce in us a feeling of unreality as we get older. In
earlier life the impressions laid down on rolls in our centres entering
via the senses, and also those from inside originating from the imagination, are more vivid and intimate and real. So when we return to
scenes of earlier life and find everything altered by new buildings and
shops, and trees cut down, lanes vanished and so on, it seems unreal
and we cannot believe it, as it were—cannot believe the evidence of
our senses—because the strength of our earlier impressions on rolls
contradicts the impressions entering us at the moment. A sense of
unreality results.
It is the same with earlier imaginings. In youth a person may
identify with many intimate imaginings of what he or she is going to
839
grow into, what position, what palace, they will possess, and how many
servants and what chorus of praise and sympathy will surround them.
These and similar imaginings can form very strong impressions on rolls
in centres. The result will be that in growing up a sense of discontent
or of disappointment, or a sadness, pervades the outlook, the cause
being unknown to the person although it is still evident in the imagination. The tendency will be to look backwards because life as it is
experienced will seem in some way unreal, the reason being that in view
of the forms of expectancy laid down by the early imaginings the life is
not what was expected. The cure for both of these sources of unreality
is the idea of recurrence and the thoughts that come from it when we
realize that the life will return as before and if we want it different we
must work on ourselves now. As we know, work on imagination is one
of the things that we have to do.
It is some time since imagination has been spoken about. Among
the many things that uselessly consume force, one is undirected imagination—where we lie passive to our imagination and bathe ourselves in
it. This gives a distaste for life. Try to observe at least one form in
yourself. Then try to observe something laid down in rolls by imagination that causes you to expect in a way that does not correspond with
what you get. This makes you unable to appreciate what you have.
In this connection another Work-thought that cures is that one's
Being attracts one's life and that therefore it is no good blaming life.
Quaremead, Ugley, February 2, 1946
ON KEEPING THE WORK ALIVE IN ONESELF
In this Work the Will-part of us must be affected with love of what
the intellectual part knows and believes. We realize through selfobservation that we do not will what we know. The Emotional Centre
is the seat of the Will, the Intellectual Centre is the seat of what we
know, and according to the diagrams of the Work the intellectual part
of us is the seat of consciousness. We have, in this diagram to which I
am referring, Consciousness put in the top compartment, Will put in the
second, and Attention in this third or lowest compartment. On one
occasion it was said that no one can keep his aim in the Work unless
Consciousness, Will and Attention co-operate. When a man makes an
aim he usually makes it from a small side of himself, his knowledge, and
very soon forgets it—that is, ceases to be conscious of it. He makes his
aim from knowledge. But he is not sufficiently conscious of his aim to
maintain it. In the meantime his will—i.e. his several wills—go in
different and opposite directions and his attention is scattered in
endless ways. The combination of Consciousness, Will and Attention
is not achieved.
840
We spoke recently of what it means to put the feeling of 'I' into the
Work. In what sense can any of you say that you have a feeling of 'I'
in this Work? What do you mean by it? And how often are you during
the day aware of this feeling of 'I' as something quite distinct from the
ordinary changing feelings of 'I' that we have in our general affairs of
life? We are given the task of remembering ourselves at least once or
twice a day. Do you find this is possible or is it merely a matter of
memory without anything real resulting? To remember oneself means
to get into a quite different state in oneself. A different feeling of 'I'
belongs to this state because it is a lifting up of consciousness to a higher
level—that is, out of the so-called waking state or second state of
consciousness that we have in ordinary affairs which is peopled by
small 'I's. To remember oneself something of Will must be contributed
to the action. It is not a thought nor can it be a matter of mere memory.
Now I may remember that I have to remember myself but not actually
remember myself—that is, it remains a question of memory and nothing
more. This is a common state to be in. All the same I may attribute
merit to myself in having remembered that I should remember myself.
It is like remembering that you must write that letter and feeling meritorious at remembering and not writing the letter. You must need to
remember yourself in order to do so and when need comes in Will comes in
—that is: I desire to remember myself, I wish to remember myself.
There is a sentence that used to be given to us to say in the earlier
Work: "I wish to remember myself". This is nothing to do with "I
think I should remember myself." A great deal of one's personal work
is spent in thinking and not doing what we think. The Will-part of us
is not involved and so we go back to the opening phrase: "The Willpart of us must be affected with love of what the intellectual part
knows and believes."
This marriage between the intellect and the Will so often spoken
of in esoteric literature of the past is indicated in this Work by the
teaching that there must be a union between new Knowledge and Being
before any new understanding is born in a man. From Knowledge
alone we can and do make many intellectual decisions—in fact, we
constantly make them—but all this takes place in only one centre,
the Intellectual Centre, and the Emotional Centre is not involved.
We have all heard how this Work must be received first by the intellect
and how first of all it must be registered in the most mechanical side of
the Intellectual Centre—i.e. the formatory part. Unless the Work is
well registered here it remains weak, like imperfect French. But it will
remain inoperative unless a person thinks about the ideas and applies
them to his own Being. Now our Will belongs to the Being-side of us
because it is our level of Being that eventually decides what we do—
our vanity perhaps or our pride. I may intellectually decide to act in
a certain way but my level of Being causes me to act in a quite different
way. I therefore increasingly perceive something in me that acts
independently and ignores my fleeting decisions. On many occasions
841
it was said in the earlier days that the object of this Work is to awaken
the Emotional Centre which is the seat of the Will but that this is not
possible unless the intellectual part of us awakens first. What does it
mean that the Intellectual Centre must awaken in this Work? It
means to begin with that we no longer take the Work as something on
the blackboard that we have to memorize. The next stage is that the
mind begins to see the truth of the ideas of the Work. When a man begins
to see the truth of this Work after years of personal work he passes into
a difficult stage of it because the state of his Being does not yet become
affected by the truth of the knowledge taught him by the Work that
he sees now through Intellectual Centre. It might be said that this is
really the first stage of the Work because then his Being becomes a real
problem and the observation of his Being becomes a matter of real
practical concern to him. When a man begins to see the truth of this
Work for himself, without the help of others, he begins to have his own
source of work in himself. It grows on him. He is, to a small extent,
awake—that is, awake in some small part of his mind—but if he imagines
that this is enough he is greatly mistaken. In fact, he is only beginning
to understand what the Work means in regard to himself and what he
has to work on and why.
At a recent meeting someone said: "When you really see your
position in the Ray of Creation, see how low down you are, and what
possibilities there are, everything begins then." This is a good observation because it is an example of how the Work can become for a moment
emotional. Some pay little attention to the great cosmological diagrams,
not understanding that they are a source of making the Work really
emotional and so connecting the Emotional Centre and the Intellectual
Centre. The Ray of Creation can prove the most emotional diagram
of all. Now when the Work becomes emotional it begins to affect the
Will-part of us. It begins to affect our Being. A thought does not affect
our Being in the same way as an emotion does. You have all noticed
that some emotional crisis affects you far more deeply than any thoughts
and may indeed alter you for the moment. Alter what? Alter your
ordinary forms of Will, your desires. It no doubt sounds strange to some
that the diagrams of the Work really can awaken the emotions. But is
it so strange when you think that all these diagrams tell us of the
existence of Greater Mind, of what is above us, of what is greater than
ourselves? You know that at present, as we are, the Emotional Centre
is governed by self-emotions. Emotions of self-liking, of vanity, of selflove, dominate the Emotional Centre and so make it so susceptible to
negative emotions, as when, for example, our vanity is hurt. It is only
in the presence of something far greater that the Emotional Centre
awakens to its true work and begins to lead towards Higher Emotional
Centre. It can be said that we do not bring the ideas of the Work
into our minds sufficiently every day to keep the Work alive in us.
Every idea, every teaching, every diagram, in this Work, belongs to
one organic whole, and no side of it can be left cold for too long. We
842
do not, for example, think nearly enough about esoteric teaching itself
throughout the ages and what its object was and from whom it came.
We do not see enough difference between this teaching and life. Nor
do we realize that this Work can only be kept alive in us and active
through conscious efforts to think about it and to keep on re-arranging
it in our minds and giving it a value greater than the business of daily
life. The Work must be above our life-'I's however much we have to
use our life-'I's in our ordinary tasks. Otherwise the Work falls down
into mechanical parts of centres and is there assailed by endless doubts
and, in short, torn to bits or, indeed, crucified. One significance of
Christ being crucified lies in the fact that in life esoteric teaching and
psychological understanding are always dragged down and crucified
by literal sensual minds. This idea is shewn in the Work by the fact
that C influences sown into the world by Conscious Humanity always
turn into B influences and indeed sometimes into A influences.
I now wish to speak shortly about the subject of keeping the
Work alive in oneself once it has been formed to a certain extent.
It has to be protected. That is the main point. It has to be regarded
as something in us that is forming itself and that we have to be careful
about. This is a curious relationship and perhaps some of you have not
realized it. You, the ordinary you in life, have to keep the Work alive
in you although this 'you' is not in the Work. What the Work is forming
is in you but you are not it and so you have to keep it alive. It is like
this: If you think that you can work all the time you will have things in
the wrong order. You are mistaking yourself for something forming in
you to which you have to attend a great deal at intervals. No one can
work all through the day and night but you can be aware of the
Work in you and retain the feeling of 'I', that the Work is in you—i.e.
a continual awareness of it. This does not mean always thinking of the
Work while you are doing your daily tasks because then you are in
mechanical 'I's and your thoughts tend to run on mechanically and create
an inner confusion. On one occasion it was said in answer to some
question that I have forgotten: "It will be work for you not to work."
I understood this to mean, at least in one sense, that always dimly
thinking of the Work in the midst of life-affairs and worrying about it is
quite useless. Either work or do not work. And remember that all work
is always a relatively conscious action. But I see no reason why a person
trying to thread a needle should think it necessary to meditate on the
Ray of Creation. I am sure that the only result will be to connect negative
feelings with the Ray of Creation. If you get constant wrong associations
with Work-ideas the laying down of the Work in your mind will be in a
tangle. The transforming instrument will be wrongly connected. It is
just like those people who are very fond of explaining how sadly they
failed to remember themselves. They connect Self-Remembering with
negative associations so that every time they try to remember themselves
there are dragged in automatically these negative associations. You
usually find that people like this enjoy being failures.
843
To return to this early formation of the Work in oneself—it can be
compared, as it were, with a small new Being gradually being organized
in oneself whose will is scarcely enough to be felt as yet. If we felt it,
we should feel a new Will in us. When we take some life-situation as
Work our reaction to it is different from our mechanical reaction and
the results are different. In such a case we behave towards the lifesituation more consciously, according to our level of understanding.
The whole power of the Work in our understanding would transform
every life-situation—but we have no such understanding at present and,
if we are sincere and do not pretend, we know this and acknowledge
our knowledge. Now we can establish in ourselves with certainty that
to take a life-situation in a Work-way rather than in a mechanical
way changes our relation to the life-situation. This is one of the things
that we can see for ourselves is so. That is, we can be certain about it.
In the earlier days of this teaching, this point was often insisted on—
namely, "What can you be certain about in the Work so far?" Start
from that. When we have no certainties in the Work, we have no
centre of gravity, no point in the Work, as it is called. We have not
started, or rather, this new thing has not started. It used often to be
said that for some years we can only work through borrowed force,
but that the time will come when this borrowed force, coming from
another, is gradually withdrawn, until one has to find one's own force
to continue. It is at this stage that it is so necessary to establish certainties in oneself concerning the Work. This demands a fresh reviewing
at intervals of all the ideas of the Work and gaining another crop of
meaning from them. It is only from the living ideas of the Work that
has life in itself that one's own Work-'I's can be kept alive. This new
thing, this new Being, has to be nourished until it is strong enough to
maintain its own existence. For this reason we have to act in such a
way as to protect this Being in ourselves and nourish it. All new
insights, observations and experiences that we can establish for ourselves as certainties nourish it. It is particularly the inner perception
of the truth of one or another of the Work-ideas that nourishes it.
For through this the side of the Will is drawn into this new thing. When
you will to do this Work your Will passes through the knowledge you
have of it and the two increase.
When the Work in us becomes stronger than life, the whole machine
reverses, is driven from the opposite end. Then the Work is stronger
than life. For us, however, the question is how to keep this small,
weak Being alive until it can become active. So we are like guardians
to ourselves and it is here that often our cleverest life-'I's can help in
protecting this new thing from life 'I's. There are many 'I's that hate the
Work and seek to ridicule it because they are threatened with death.
It is indeed just by the struggle with these 'I's that seek to destroy
the Work in us that this new thing sown by the Work can grow and,
as I said, in this clever 'I's can help. One must not let doubting,
slanderous, sneering 'I's attack this new thing that is forming but meet
844
them cleverly. So one must wage war with them outside the place
where the Work is forming this new Being in us and not let them enter
that place. They enter us—yes—but must not penetrate to that inner
place we are guarding. Bad talking opens the way to this place directly
and destroys anything forming there. That is why so much emphasis
is laid on the danger of bad talking about the Work itself.
Quaremead, Ugley, February 9, 1946
COMMENTARY ON ONE'S LEVEL OF BEING
One person writes to me as follows: "I realize that I can do and
experience nothing beyond my level of Being."
My reply is that this observation, which is an intelligent one, divides
itself into two parts—i.e. "I can do nothing beyond my level of Being"
and "I can experience nothing beyond my level of Being." In regard
to the first part: "I can do nothing beyond my level of Being"—this is
correct. A man cannot do beyond his level of Being because his level
of Being will always make him do what he has always done. This,
in the Work-sense, is not doing. It is not doing in the Work-sense
because it is mechanical. What we do mechanically according to our
level of Being is not doing. We may think we are doing—in fact, we
think we are doing at every moment—but IT is doing. Our mechanical
Being is doing. To do, in the Work-sense, is to go against mechanical
doing, and mechanical man cannot do in the Work-sense. Whatever
he does, in the ordinary sense, is due to his mechanical Being. The
observation is quite correct in so far as it says: "I realize that I cannot
do beyond my level of Being."
Now the second part of the observation: "I cannot experience
beyond my level of Being," is not correct. If it were correct, no one
could shift from where he is. Everyone would be tied down to his level
of Being and would be incapable of growing—that is, would be incapable of any growth of Being. A man, a woman, can experience
beyond their level of Being momentarily. They can have flashes of
something that belongs beyond their level of Being. This is what can
carry us on. Otherwise our situation would be hopeless. If we did
not
know a little what a thing was like we would not seek it.
Another question was asked: "How is it that we can experience beyond
our level of Being?"
The answer is that our level of Being is not one thing but is composed on a small scale of slightly different levels of Being. This was
recently compared with telegraph wires on one of the ordinary telegraph posts some of which are higher and some of which are lower. Put
differently, it means that we have 'I's on different levels in our Being
—that is, better and worse 'I's. We have, for example, 'I's connected
845
with Magnetic Centre, and 'I's that are simply immersed in life. We
can speak about our general level of Being as a level characterized by
sleep and mechanicalness, but if we take our Being on a different scale
—i.e. on a much smaller scale—our Being, although it is mechanical in
the general sense, has within it gradations or degrees of less mechanical
and more mechanical. For this reason it is possible for us to experience
something beyond our general or average level of Being. As I said
before, unless it were so we would be fixed down permanently in our
present level of Being. This means that our receptive side is greater
than our doing side. We therefore find ourselves in the position in this
Work of being able to see better than we can do. In certain situations
we have flashes of understanding in which perhaps we see quite clearly
what we should do and yet we find it impossible to do what we have
seen. We are dragged down by our average level of Being which is that
which does. We see, for example, quite clearly in a moment of insight
that we should behave in a certain way but when the practical moment
comes we behave in the former way. This discrepancy is inevitable
and must be endured with the very greatest patience.
A question was then asked: "What then should I do?"
This question always arises in everyone's mind. The Work-answer
is about what you should not do. The question should be: "What then
should we not do?" It is just here that the Work comes in. The Work
teaches a great many things that we should not do, for example, that
we should not identify with our negative emotions, and so on. But
such is our impatient nature that we want to have a definite answer as to
what we should do. In fact, our whole psychology is based on this idea
—i.e. "Tell me exactly what I should do." This urgent illusory doingimpulse has to be overcome in the Work completely. It is a life-impulse,
it is a life-thought, a life-feeling, and the paradox is that in life we
always have a feeling that we can do and yet from the Work-point of
view we are really doing nothing because all the time our level of
Being is making us act mechanically in every situation and this we call
doing. For this reason the Work speaks about realizing our mechanicalness as one of the first steps towards greater Being. If you will always
attribute to everything you do in life the idea that you are doing it of
course you will never quite understand where the Work comes in.
By observation one has to come to that point at which one realizes
that when one thinks one is doing one is not doing in any way whatsoever but IT is doing, the machine in us is doing, one is doing
mechanically what one has always done before. Here no question of
doing in the Work-sense enters. IT is doing. In my case Nicoll is doing;
in your case Smith, Robinson, Brown is doing.
There was a question: "Well, how can I do in the Work-sense?"
The answer is that you cannot do as you are in a Work-sense.
"Then, what am I to do?"
"Realize that you cannot do. Realize the mechanicalness of your
Being."
846
"Then do you mean that I cannot do anything at all and that I have to
think so?"
"No, you have to realize that you cannot do things, not think so."
"How can I realize this?"
"You can only realize it by observing yourself. If you observe yourself sincerely over a sufficient period you will begin to realize that you
cannot do—i.e. that you always do as you always did and that you
cannot change yourself. You know how you always think you can change
yourself and how you are quite certain that you could be different if you
wanted to and you know that you always think this about other people.
But you have to realize that you cannot be different from what you are
and from that to be able to realize that other people cannot be different
from what they are. I remember on one occasion when someone asked:
'What then shall we do?' the answer was: 'Enjoy yourselves.' Now
this person said: 'It would be the easiest thing in the world for me
to enjoy myself, but I am a serious man—I have difficulties to face—
and I have no time to enjoy myself.' You will see that this person had
the idea that he could enjoy himself quite easily if he wished—that is,
he had an ingrained conviction that he could enjoy himself, that he was
doing his duty instead. Of course the answer is that he could not
enjoy himself as he thought he could, he could not step out of hismechanicalness which made him do what he was doing. It is like a
typewriter shouting at a bicycle and saying: ' Why do you go round and
round?' and the bicycle shouting: 'Why do you go up and down,
clack, clack?' Neither can alter its machinery. And so it is with us.
We are mechanical and our first step is to realize we are machines,
and that everything we do in all our relationships, in all the thoughts and
feelings we go with, we identify with. But the Work teaches that we
are not machines if we begin to wake up. A machine cannot change
itself, a machine cannot remember itself, a machine cannot awaken.
But, the Work teaches, we can awaken, we can remember ourselves,
we can change ourselves."
"How then is all this possible?"
"It is only possible by following what the Work teaches. The Work
begins with self-observation whereby gradually we may realize how
we are machines and how we react mechanically to everything. When
we begin to realize that we react mechanically to everything and
have always been taking these mechanical reactions as 'I' and thinking
that we arc doing, then we begin to realize that we are really mechanical
and that that gift we are given as distinct from animals and pure
machines is that we can increase consciousness through observing that
we are machines and that all our lives up to now have been mechanical
—a series of petty, personal, sensitive, mechanical reactions to everything. Just at this point comes in the whole idea that Man can cease
to be a machine. This entry of another consciousness of himself is the
beginning of the Work. Such a man no longer takes himself for
granted. Now the Work teaches that you have to do certain things
847
which takes the form of not doing certain things as, for example, in
general, not identifying—that is, not putting your feeling of 'I' into
all your mechanical reactions. So the Work consists for a long time in
not doing things, according to the instructions laid down so clearly in
this Work on its practical side."
"Then do you mean that we can do nothing at all?"
"Yes, you can do one thing. You can remember yourselves. That
is the only thing said on the positive side of doing in this Work. Everything else is a process of not doing, not behaving mechanically."
"How can I remember myself?"
"By realizing that you never remember yourself."
"But I am sure that I always remember myself."
"You may be sure that you always remember yourself but just
notice whether you do."
"But I always do what I do consciously."
"Do you always speak quite consciously, knowing exactly what
you are going to say?"
"Yes, I am sure that I do everything consciously and I am quite aware of
what I am saying and doing all the time."
"In that case you must observe sincerely and see whether it is quite
true. If you are sincere with yourself you will find that you do and
think and feel mechanically and that for the greater part of the day you
are not aware of yourself at all."
"I do not agree with you."
"Well, in that case you must practise self-observation. It is only
through self-observation done sincerely and uncritically that you can
come into the standpoint of this Work in regard to yourself. If you
take yourself for granted as being a conscious person who does everything consciously and deliberately you are not able to connect yourself
with this Work. This Work will fall on deaf ears."
"What is the object of self-observation?"
"The object of self-observation is to make you aware of the fact
that you are not in any way what you think you are. The object of
self-observation is to shew you by direct self-experience that you are
really a mechanical person who cannot help doing what you do at
every moment and that if you want to change yourself, which is the
object of this Work, you have to realize this."
"Is not this an extremely depressing point of view?"
"Yes."
"Then why should I take up this Work?"
"I see no reason why you should if you are quite satisfied with
yourself as you are."
"I always think that introspection is a very morbid thing."
"I agree with you but the Work does not teach introspection but
conscious uncritical self-observation. Introspection is mechanical:
observation is conscious."
"Don't you think this Work makes one very self-centred."
848
"Exactly the opposite. It shifts you from this self-satisfied, selfcentred view of yourself. It makes you really think you are nothing
like what you thought. In short, this Work done rightly is very painful
to you and will smash up all your self-centredness. As regards the
remark that this Work is selfish, you must all understand that this Work
is going against your selfishness at every moment, against your selfcomplacency. This Work is to wake us up and if applied rightly it is a
very powerful and painful thing. It is something that destroys your
self-complacency, your selfishness, your self-esteem, your phantasies
about yourself, your pictures of yourself and, in short, your False
Personality. It makes you see yourself naked—makes you see what you
are really like. It destroys the Pharisee in you. It makes you see that
you have to do something about yourself before you try to help other
people."
"But surely helping other people comes first."
"How can you help other people unless you have become more
conscious of yourself? How can the blind lead the blind? Before you
start off helping other people for heaven's sake look at yourself and see
whether you can really help yourself to begin with. Do you call this
self-satisfied imposing your self-will on other people helping them?
The Work can help you to change and when the Work has begun to
change you then you can help other people according to the degree
that the Work has changed you in yourself and then your help will be
valuable. But to start as you are, thinking you can help other people as
you are, means simply that you impose your ideas of what other people
should be on them without realizing what you are like yourself.
The more you change in yourself through pain and self-realization,
the more you see what you are like yourself without self-justifying,
the more can you help others. The less blind you are to yourself the
more you can help people who are still blind to themselves, but to
become less blind to oneself takes many years of hard work and much
pain and much overcoming of self-will, self-love, and much overcoming
of prejudices, of thinking that you know everything, thinking that you
are a starting-point in yourself. This Work teaches us to start from a
quite different point from what we imagine we are. This Work does not
begin with False Personality—i.e. with what we imagine we are. The
whole world is full of False Personalities and each False Personality
thinks he or she knows best. The Work is a very big thing that gradually
drains away from us all these imaginings and falsities about ourselves.
Then perhaps we can begin to help other people, but in a quite different
way from what we would have started from before we met the Work and
before it began to act on us internally through its simplicity and
sincerity. The Work is a very wonderful thing if you begin to apply it
to yourself, something very quiet and gentle and absolutely genuine at
every point where it really begins to penetrate through layers of falsity
and imagination that lie in us uppermost. If you begin to have Work'I's in you—that is, 'Is that begin to catch some of the meaning of the
849
Work, then you may have insights beyond your average level of Being,
and these insights, if affirmed in the best part of your mind as truth, will
gradually change you and begin to work on your level of Being and
alter Being. Then gradually what you know on your best side will be
able to be done and carried out by your Being. The Work says that
this transformation is possible in everyone if they will only work on
themselves. So begin by thinking what non-identifying means, with
yourself, with your thoughts and your feelings. It is not doing, and
gradually this process of not doing will enable you on a very small
scale to do."
Quaremead, Ugley, February 16, 1946
COMMENTARY ON GIVING UP ONE'S SUFFERING
You have often heard before that the only thing that we can sacrifice
in the Work is our suffering. The Work teaches that we have to have a
new kind of suffering not based on our ordinary mechanical suffering.
All change in oneself can only take place by giving up what one was
and becoming something different. To change oneself means to become
different. I cannot change myself if I remain the same person that I
am mechanically. Therefore in order to change I must give up something, sacrifice something. The idea of sacrifice runs through all
esotericism. It is quite obvious why. The reason is that you cannot
change yourself unless you give up or sacrifice something that you are at
present. It has often been repeated in this teaching that change of
Being means that you must alter something in yourself, in your Being.
You cannot be what you are and at the same time change. Change of
Being always involves giving up something and so sacrificing something
in your Being. And the Work says that the first thing that you have to
sacrifice—and here I may say emphatically the first thing—is your
ordinary mechanical suffering. Now unless you see what is meant here
you will not start the Work aright in yourself. You will begin from your
own ideas of what you have to sacrifice or give up and that will be no
good and will lead to no results. A man, a woman, must give up their
suffering and sacrifice that first of all, because this can lead to a change
of Being. For this to happen one must be able to see through selfobservation what one suffers from.
I remember that Mr. Ouspensky spoke very early about this
question. He said first of all that everyone without knowing it has
fallen into typical forms of suffering from which they derive selfjustification—namely, they justify their suffering and so take it for
granted as part and parcel of themselves. He called it a kind of thing
that you drag behind you all the time or push in front of you. He
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described very clearly in words that I have not remembered enough
how people arc chained to this suffering that they have accumulated
according to their own ideas of life and how it has treated them.
He said: "All this suffering belongs to the side of Personality." He
said: "People suffer uselessly but cling to their suffering. People have
not found life to be what they supposed it would be and instead of
seeing their forms of imagination and their acquired attitudes to life
they only think they have real, genuine suffering and so feel in consequence that no one really understands all that they have been through,
and so on. Everyone," he said, "is dragged down by this acquired
suffering from which come all internal considering and account-making.
All your internal considering and account-making," he said, "is
based on this acquired suffering which people value very much."
He spoke about the impossibility of escaping from the Personality with
its acquired attitudes and buffers save through a force entirely new
that can destroy all this litter, this useless mess in ourselves. He said:
"We have to begin to think in a new way both about life and about
ourselves and this is only possible when we feel a new force entering us
carrying with it new ideas, new ways of taking in things. The redemption from suffering is difficult but possible, whereas in life it is impossible.
When you begin to understand this Work and all that it teaches and
compare it with what you are you will understand what I mean. You
will see how what you are is quite different from what this Work
teaches that you should be." Mr. Ouspensky used here a phrase that
I always remember. He said: "When you begin to be alongside this
Work and become conscious of what you are like through selfobservation you will see how you are not like this Work, how your
Being does not correspond with it." People asked: "Then what should
we do?" The answer always was: "You must remember yourselves
and the first thing you must give up is your suffering." I think he meant,
as regards the latter part of what he said, that as long as you carry
your suffering with you you cannot do the Work. You have to give
it up—that is, you have to sacrifice this strange thing in you that is
the basis of all internal considering and account-making. On another
occasion Mr. Ouspensky said: "No one can reach a higher level of
Being unless he gives up his present forms of suffering." At that time
he was talking about our idea of justice and was emphasizing how what
we call justice has nothing to do with justice. He said: "Justifying
yourself is always from your own idea of justice. For example, everyone justifies their negative states." He meant that everyone has a
sense of what is justice for them and finding that life does not correspond
to it they cling to this sense of what they think should be justice for
them. Consequently we justify our negative states, our internal considering, and our account-making, and if we view the whole thing from
the Work point of view we begin to realize that we cannot justify
ourselves on our own ideas of justice. We have to act from another
sense of justice. Suppose you talk wrongly in this Work and you are
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brought to the point of having to confess that you have talked wrongly,
you will find that you always justify yourself on the basis of your own
ideas of justice—personal justification of yourself. And behind that
will lie your suffering which springs from the idea of justice that you
have acquired and imitated. This has to be broken by something higher,
by some higher form of what is justice. You may say to yourself:
"Towards life I am quite right in feeling injustice but towards the
Work and its ideas I cannot say the same thing." In the Work we are
under a new discipline, a new sense of justice—namely, of what is
right, of what is just, from a higher level. So we have to learn to serve
another set of ideas quite different from those we have acquired from
life. Mr. Ouspensky said: "We are like monkeys. A monkey can
justify himself in terms of being a monkey, but we are trying to become
human beings and can no longer justify ourselves in terms of being
monkeys." He constantly emphasized that we are being taught in
this Work ideas and self-discipline which were not necessary in life.
He said: "We are trying to obey higher laws—i.e. we are trying to
become conscious people so that we can live amongst conscious people
and learn how to behave amongst this higher level of Beings. This
Work comes from conscious people."
Now to return to this question of the first thing that we have to
sacrifice—namely, our mechanical suffering—it is quite clear that
first of all we all have to become aware of what forms our mechanical
suffering takes. Unless we are conscious of a thing we cannot sacrifice
it. You cannot start from something that you are unconscious of. The
Work is to increase our consciousness of ourselves, of our state of Being.
No one can work on his Being unless he is beginning to observe what his
Being is like. The Work says that everyone as regards Being has his or
her own form of suffering, of negative emotions, of grievances, of sad
thoughts and feelings, and so on. This applies to everyone. There are
no exceptions. And this thing in ourselves we are told to sacrifice at
the very outset of this teaching. Therefore it is very necessary to try
to observe one's form of suffering.
You may ask: "What are these forms of suffering that we have
to sacrifice?" There is the suffering of man towards woman, of woman
towards man. For example, a man may feel that he has never met the
woman who really understands him. Or he may feel simply that he
has never been properly appreciated or given a chance, and so on.
Or a woman may feel that she has never been married—or that she has
never had any children—or that she is always having children—and this
is her suffering. Then take all the mechanical forms of suffering that
arise from feeling that you have never been understood by your parents,
your husband, your wife, or your children. I think it would be impossible to enumerate all the forms of suffering that people form in
themselves and cling to as the most valuable things in their lives.
And it is exactly this suffering derived from life and all its awkwardness that has to be sacrificed. And here I would remind you of what
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was said recently about 'if only': 'if only I had been given a better
chance,' 'if only I had had a child,' 'if only I had met the right kind
of person,' 'if only the war had not broken out when it did,' 'if only
I had not invested my money in German marks,' 'if only I had been
taller,' 'if only I had not got the face I have,' 'if only I had more money,'
'if only I could meet better kinds of people,' 'if only I had had more
sympathy in all my troubles'—this 'if only' is connected with all your
mechanical suffering that has to be sacrificed. Another form of suffering
is a sense of failure. The strange thing is that this can be enjoyed. A
person having made no real effort in life may fail and in a curious way
enjoy his failure, or a person may think he has done his best to make
relationship with someone who is difficult for him and having failed
to do so may enjoy his failure. This curious form of suffering cannot
be gone into in this paper. As I say, this is a very curious form of
suffering whereby some people adapt themselves to life by being failures
and liking to talk about it. But in such cases you will always find that
they have some form of pride or vanity that makes it possible for them
to pretend that their failures are genuine, falling back on the feeling
that they are or could have been successes at something else, especially
if they have pride in their social position, birth, or something of the
same kind—i.e. in something purely negative, not really themselves.
I have sometimes thought that this is the most difficult form
to deal with when people admit failure, holding always secretly on to
something else. This is a spurious kind of suffering. At the same time,
it must be seen through and sacrificed. Behind it lies the sacrifice of
pride and vanity. But this example only shews how extraordinarily
insincere people are with themselves and how self-deception makes it
possible for them to carry on their lives. We do not see the other side
of the whole matter, the dark, unaccepted, unacknowledged side, but
that is why the Work says that uncritical self-observation lets in a
ray of light into this dark side which stands in the way of all individual
development in everyone. We are all frauds, but we do not see through
our fraudulence and in the Work we must begin with this. All our
mechanical suffering is fraudulent only we will not admit it. Fraudulent
suffering is the keynote to what we have to sacrifice. Real suffering is
utterly different and always opens us to a higher level: fraudulent
suffering closes us. It is extraordinary how a moment of real suffering
makes everything false fall away from you and at such moments you
understand quite plainly what this Work is about, but fraudulent,
self-invented suffering comes between us and Higher Centres—that is,
between us and the voice of the Work that is always speaking to us,
and which we have to learn at first from outside, from a teacher, and
after a time can begin to hear speaking to us inside.
The extraordinary thing is that you meet people very often who
deny that they have any kind of mechanical suffering. They are
usually very self-complacent people and quite dead in themselves,
and yet if you are clever with them you will soon find out that they
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have their private forms of suffering derived from life. Now it is a
very good idea to try to observe your typical forms of mechanical
suffering and here it is a good thing to try to observe your phantasies
—i.e. the passive work of the imagination in you. I remember once
being very much struck with the idea that at least a million people die
every week and probably far more and that many of them think that
they are going to a better place. They are all full of their own personal
problems, their own grievances, their own suffering on this Earth.
How many of these people do you think—suppose that you were some
kind of Being on a higher level who had to direct them to different
places in the spiritual world—how many of these people would strike
you as not being of the ordinary type? Would not each one of them
come to you complaining—i.e. bringing to you all their mechanical
sufferings, grievances, all these questions about how someone did not
say Good-morning to them, and how many would come to you quite
clean, without any grievances, without any sufferings from the Earth,
and when asked what they wanted, would answer, not that they wanted
justice, but that they wanted to know more and be more and understand more. This vision impressed me very much and made me think
very deeply about what I might be under these circumstances. We have
often spoken about forgiving debts and about how it means cancelling
complaints against others. All our Earth-problems are of no value at
all at a higher level of Being, and our work is to cancel our Earthproblems, our Earth-suffering, our internal accounting, our negative
states towards others, our grievances towards others, our dislike of
others and our hate of others. Otherwise we are earthbound and so
like those monkeys of which we have spoken. Do you think this is a
very harsh idea? I fancy we can gain some idea of what all this means,
even from life. If you want to reach a higher position in life, can you
bring your grievances in all the time, your personal, petty problems,
in view of the position that you wish to reach ?
Mr. Ouspensky once said to me: "People do not understand that this
Work is about going somewhere and that it lays down definite instructions as to how you can go there, provided you work on yourself, and
that therefore, as a person advances, the Work changes for him."
He was talking to me at the time about something in myself that was
holding me up and he said: "Don't you see that it is nothing to do with
me, this, but that it is in yourself, and that as long as you do not work
on it and try not to identify with it, it will always hold you back?"
He said: "You object to these people, but they are you and you are
them." Naturally at that time I did not see that this was part of my
suffering. I did not realize that this was one of the meanings of giving
up one's suffering. On another occasion he said to me, looking at me
sideways: "Why do you enjoy your negative emotions so much?"
And I always remember not exactly what he said but this look he gave
me sideways. It was, in fact, through this look that he gave me that I
began to observe that I did enjoy my negative emotions—that is, my
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mechanical suffering. I suppose that by now many of you begin to
understand how much you enjoy your negative emotions. The Work
says that to reach a higher level of Being there must be no negative
emotions and that the negative part of the Emotional Centre must be
destroyed in us. Otherwise, if with our present forms of suffering
Higher Centres came they would simply intensify everything a thousand
times. On one occasion I heard G. say: "We must destroy our Emotional
Centre." Being still very young in the Work I thought what a terrible
thing this would be and how harsh and cruel everything would be if
one's Emotional Centre were destroyed. When I became older in the
Work I realized so very clearly what was meant. Our Emotional
Centre, as it is, is nothing but self-emotions with the resultant negative
emotions arising from them. The purification of the Emotional
Centre must, practically speaking, destroy the Emotional Centre
in us as it is now, with all our little personal, sensitive, difficult reactions,
our little personal feelings about everyone, our bundle of sensitive
likes and dislikes—in short, our very small petty emotions, that we
have as long as self-emotions govern us. When you begin to serve
this Work really you have to lose these petty, daily, small self-emotions
and you can only do so by realizing that the Work is much bigger than
you. We spoke about this recently in connection with the realization
of Greater Mind. You have to serve the Work and not yourself. The
Work must not be a function of yourself but you must become a function of the Work.
What does serving the Work mean? It means obeying what the
Work teaches you. It was said recently at a meeting that you must
understand that serving the Work means serving it psychologically,
to begin with. Suppose that you were about to pass on some unpleasant scandal and you suddenly remembered yourself in connection with what the Work teaches and did not pass on this scandal,
knowing that to do so is mechanical and that it would only do harm
—then you would begin to serve the Work. Or suppose that you wish
to be negative because someone has not treated you in what you think
the right way according to your own form of justice and you remember
yourself and do not react mechanically, then you will be serving the
Work. To serve the Work means to obey what it teaches you to practise
on yourself. You want to be gloomy and moody, to object, and so on,
and you observe your state and begin to separate from it—then you are
serving the Work. And in so doing you are giving up some of your
mechanical suffering. Or suppose you are about to pass into one of your
typical force-losing states of worry, of complaining, of being upset
about everything, of disliking everything—suppose that you observe
this and cease to identify with it because of the feeling of the
Work in you—then you are serving the Work psychologically. You are
beginning to work on yourself, you are beginning to see what the Work
means in yourself. You are beginning to obey something that is not
yourself. All this belongs to giving up your suffering. But to work on
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your typical forms of suffering, close and sincere observation of your
Being is necessary, and directing the Work on to those places in your
Being through the light of self-observation, and trying not to go with
these reactions, not to identify with them, not to put feeling of 'I'
into them, and the more you value the Work in which higher meaning
is something above the meaning of life, the more will the Work help
you to overcome your mechanical suffering.
Quaremead, Ugley, February 22, 1946
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING OF FOOT
On one occasion it was said by Mr. Ouspensky that he had leather
to sell for those who wish to make shoes for themselves. There are two
kinds of shoes. The first shoes are made by life in us. We learn to
behave in certain ways, to think that these people are right and those
people are wrong, we imbibe ingrained attitudes through imitation
according to our social position, and all the rest of it. Some of these
shoes are made more by the mother and some more by the father.
When you see a person walking in his father's shoes or perhaps in his
mother's shoes, you understand that that person is not awake yet. All
this has reference to the feet and we have to think to-night about the
meaning of the feet esoterically. Life-shoes wear out sometimes and
on the other hand sometimes they remain permanent. A person who
has never questioned his acquired life-attitudes, his buffers, his prejudices, and so on, will perhaps have permanent shoes, made by the
action of life on him. At the same time it is possible for a person to
come to the point in which his or her shoes get worn out. Now the
shoes are that with which we walk on the Earth. Esoterically speaking,
our feet are where we touch external life and the shoes that cover our
feet represent the attitudes and prejudices and opinions that we meet
life with. When the Work says it has leather to sell to make shoes it
means of course to make new shoes so that we can walk in life in a
different way. The foot, psychologically speaking, is the most external
part of us, the part of us that meets with life. You have heard about the
First Conscious Shock which takes place at the point where external
impressions enter us. Ordinarily there is no shock here. External
life enters us and we behave towards it always in much the same way.
We take every thing as we have always taken it. We behave in the
same way. We relate ourselves to external circumstances, to people,
to all that belongs to external life in the way we always have done.
The First Conscious Shock consists in the transformation of impressions.
If you take everything coming in through the senses from external life
in the same way as you have always done you will not transform life.
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Every time you see A. or B., who exist in external life, whom you see
and hear through your external senses, you react to them in the same
way as you always have done. You are not working on yourself, you
are not giving yourself the First Conscious Shock, which consists in
receiving external impressions in a new way. A man, a woman, heavily
prejudiced, orthodox, and opinionated, will naturally find it very difficult to take in impressions in a new way. Where their psychological
feet touch life they will always walk in the same manner.
Now if we turn this into Work-terms we can say that in such a
case we behave mechanically. So the mechanical side of us is our
feet. As long as we behave mechanically towards every situation
we will always walk in the same places, psychologically speaking—
that is to say, we will not be giving ourselves the First Conscious Shock
or transforming incoming impressions. Remember that all you see
and hear, all the people you know, all that you read, is incoming
impressions, because we are only in contact with external life through
incoming impressions from our senses. It is just at this point of incoming impressions that the Work teaches something quite definite. If
these incoming impressions always fall in the same place in you and
excite the same reactions, the same dislikes, the same likes, the same
judgments, the same criticisms, the same thoughts, the same feelings,
then nothing can shift you from where you are. You will not be doing
this Work. In such a case one is a pure machine, a pure example of
mechanical behaviour. Your feet, which are this mechanicalness
through which you touch life, will always walk in the same way.
We were speaking recently here about how the Work from the
very beginning teaches us that we have to go against our mechanicalness and also how this is impossible unless by long observation we can
see our mechanicalness. This is the introduction to the Work. A
man, a woman, who cannot observe themselves and their mechanical
behaviour cannot work on themselves. They take their mechanical behaviour for granted, being certain that their automatic condemnations,
their criticisms, their prejudices, their contempts, and so on, are absolutely
right. In short, they take life in the only way they can as long as they
do not observe how they take it. I think the main point lies here—
namely, that, accepting these mechanical reactions to other people,
to external life, they feel that they are not only absolutely right but that
no other way of taking people and the events of life could be possible.
This is a mistake. Sometimes quite genuinely a person may say to me:
"How can I take this or that person differently because I feel sure that
this or that person is wrong and not the kind of person that I would
ordinarily know if I could help it?" This means that there is no act
of transformation taking place in them. The external impressions come
in and, like the automatic telephone exchange, ring up the same
reactions in them and they feel that this is the only way to react.
Speaking recently about this, I said it was a good thing to read the
Sermon on the Mount and to realize that it is all about reacting in a
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new way. To react as a Pharisee is one thing—a Pharisee means one
who reacts in a fixed and prejudiced way—but the Sermon on the
Mount has nothing to do with praise of the Pharisee in us. It has to do
with destroying the Pharisee—with taking things in a quite different
way. So it belongs to the teaching about the First Conscious Shock—
that is, the transformation of incoming impressions. But we always take
incoming impressions of other people, of life-situations, in the same
way. We are not creating this First Conscious Shock. We are still
wearing our life-made shoes. Certainly we are not shod with the leather
of the Work.
From what has been said you can understand that the foot represents
the purely mechanical side, or Personality governed by False Personality.
In this Work we are told that we have to make Personality, speaking
in general, more and more passive. That is to change one's mechanical
reaction. Personality is something acquired in us, chiefly through
imitation. You have a mother-personality, a father-personality, a
mixed personality, a school-personality, a college-personality, and so on.
As long as this personality, however acquired, is active in you, you will
always take every person in the external world, everything said,
everything read, everything seen, in exactly the same way as you have
always done, and you will feel that you are quite right in taking things
in that way. Why? Because you have never challenged your Personality,
you have never begun to observe this thing called Personality in you,
but have accepted it as Truth. You stand on your Personality, just
as you stand on your feet, because, psychologically, your most inveterate
and habitual psychology is your feet. The psychological man, the psychological woman, rests on the feet of the most mechanical 'I's in the
moving parts of centres. It is the basis of your reactions, the source of
how you behave.
Now the Work has leather to sell, to make new shoes, new feet,
new ways of behaving towards life and all its incidents. It is a marvellous
thing to realize that you can behave differently towards any single
thing in life, that you need not take it as you are taking it, and that,
in short, you can behave differently and feel differently provided you
begin to think differently—that is, change the mind. As you know, this
Work is to make us think differently and from that gradually to feel
differently, and eventually to see ourselves with new eyes. Do not you
ever get tired of the way you behave? It would indeed be wonderful
not to think, not to feel and not to behave in the way we always
mechanically do. When Smith realizes Smith and wishes to separate
from Smith, he begins to understand what this Work is about. He
begins to see what mechanicalness means and through self-observation
to realize the mechanical figure in him, the pure machinery, to which
hitherto he has been a complete slave. It is said in the Work that the
realization of our mechanicalness is the first step towards Self-Remembering. The quality of the First Conscious Shock is sometimes denoted
by the term Self-Remembering. It is said that if a man will give himself
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this Conscious Shock in the midst of his cares and anxieties he will
create in himself new force. In fact, he will actually make new hydrogens, new energies in himself. It is in this sense that it is meant that the
realization of mechanicalness is one of the first forms of Self-Remembering. It is a form of transformation of impressions, of the transformation of our whole relationship to ourselves and so to outer life. It is a
step towards not being a pure mechanical function of the Personality.
If you can understand something about this First Conscious Shock that
takes place just where incoming impressions enter you from outer life,
you will begin to feel the magical experience that you need not take
this typical situation in the typical way you have always taken it,
that you need not feel this dislike that you always feel, this hatred, this
disgust, this boredom, this sadness. You begin to learn what it means
that you need not identify with everything. So you begin to see where,
in what direction, new life can begin. All this belongs to the understanding of the First Conscious Shock which is transformation, to the
realization that one need not react to impressions as one has always done.
As I said, this mechanical, habitual side of us is called, esoterically,
foot, the psychological basis of yourself, what you stand on at present.
There is a very interesting passage in Isaiah, which begins with the
strange remark that you must turn away your foot from the Sabbath.
Isaiah is an esoteric book. It is full of esoteric teaching. That means at
once that it cannot be taken literally just as any parable in the Gospels
cannot be taken literally. It has inner meaning behind its literal
meaning. Let us take this first phrase: "If thou turn away thy foot
from the Sabbath"—If you take that literally, what can it mean? If
you take the Sabbath as going to Church it seems to mean that if you
turn your foot away from Church it would be a good thing. But of
course it does not mean this. You have to understand the passage
psychologically. The foot is your most mechanical 'I's situated in
the most external part of centres, the parts where you touch the
ground—i.e. external life—and react to this external life mechanically.
If you turn yourself away from your mechanical reaction in connection
with the Sabbath, then you may get something worthwhile. Let us
quote the whole passage :
"If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy
pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, and the
holy of the Lord honourable; and shalt honour it, not doing thine
own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine
own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I
will make thee to ride upon the high places of the earth; and I
will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth
of the Lord hath spoken it."
(Is. LVIII 13, 14)
If you look at these strange verses psychologically, you see that
they are full of meaning and they tell you exactly what this Work tells
us now. This Work tells you that if you go against your mechanicalness
even for a short time you will get some result. The meaning of Sabbath
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in its original sense is cessation. The meaning of the Sabbath is to cease
from your mechanical self, to cease from having your own way, from
speaking as you do ordinarily, and so on. You can have your Sabbath,
your cessation from your mechanicalness, whenever you like. For
example, you can have a cessation from your mechanical self for half
an hour and even for five minutes. What does it mean to cease from
doing your will ? It means to do the will of the Work. For example, at
this particular moment, to do the will of the Work instead of serving
your self-will may mean not to identify with your present suffering.
Or it may mean not to justify yourself as you are doing. Or it may mean
to externally consider that person. All this the Work teaches us. Or
it may mean for you at this moment to stop making internal accounts,
to stop internal considering : this is what the Work teaches us. It may
mean not to go with negative emotions or believe in them, but to
separate from them: this the Work teaches us. It means, in short, all
that the Work teaches us. And when we try to do this for a short time
we have our own Sabbath, our own cessation from ourselves. So we
turn our foot away. Most people think that Sabbath is rest from lifework, but esoterically the Sabbath means work on yourself by ceasing
from yourself. It is a good thing to work on yourself sincerely for a
short Sabbath and try to bring the whole of the ideas of the Work into
your mind so that they lift you up from mechanical life. The Work is
a higher power acting on us but we must bring the whole of the Work
into our minds and the whole meaning of it to lift us up from too petty
talking, too many life-anxieties, too easily-indulged jealousies, to this
higher power, and if we do this Work we will always find results.
But do not start with turning away only from your physical appetites.
Rather begin to turn away from things in your emotional and
thinking centres. Turn away from being negative, from feeling that
other people should do what you find you have to do. Turn away from
your identified states, from your ordinary judgments of other people.
Turn away from your depression. Turn away from the feeling that
you are right. Turn away from all the Work teaches us to turn away
from. For then one can get new force which Isaiah, in the same chapter,
describes in these words:
"And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy
soul in dry places, and make strong thy bones; and thou shalt be
like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters
fail not."
(Is. LVIII 11)
This is a description of the results of giving the First Conscious
Shock.
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Quaremead, Ugley, March 2, 1946
COMMENTARY ON BEING SEALED AGAINST LIFE
Eventually we must become channels for this teaching. If we can
pass on this teaching as it is taught we get something for ourselves.
In order to do this something must be sealed in us, sealed tight against
the effect of things happening outside us. The Work must be given
a place in us where eventually nothing from the external world can
affect it. We spoke some time ago about the Work being like a new
being forming in oneself and how one has to protect this being and
fight for it often against the logic of the external senses. We spoke last
time of the meaning of the foot. Your foot is your external side which
touches life. I will speak some time more fully about what the eyes
mean in contrast with the foot. But, briefly, the eyes mean esoterically
one's inner psychological understanding as distinct from the understanding that one gains from the senses or one's foot. It used often to
be said in the Work that we have to go against life. For example, you
read the papers and see how everyone in the world seems to be angry
and violent and you may have the thought: "What is the good of the
Work if everything is going in this way?" Now does not such a thought
mean that you have not sealed off the Work from the influences
of life? One is letting one's attitude to the Work get mixed with
things belonging to the great machinery of life, just as if one expected
external life to correspond with or conform to the Work. This sealing
of oneself off from life so that one can guard and keep separate the
Work-ideas is necessary. It has to be done sooner or later. The
Work is under other laws than life is. Its source is from another
direction. If you judge the Work by what happens in life you will not
understand it. Here in this Work we are studying something different
from life. We seek to come under influences different from the influences of life. We try to form something in ourselves that life cannot
shake, whatever happens in life, whether war or peace, poverty or
wealth, bad weather or good weather, failure or success. The idea is
that we have to form in ourselves a place where the Work exists and
have to guard this place. As you know, the Work teaches that everything that happens in life happens in the only way it can happen.
It says that life is a great machine. It teaches that Organic Life on
Earth serves a cosmic purpose. This sensitive living film surrounding
the Earth is used for a deliberate purpose. Yet there is a chance for
Man, an individual man, to disconnect himself from some of the
mechanical laws of life and begin to grow through more conscious
laws. When you take this standpoint the non-correspondence of life
with what you expect becomes no longer a source of negativeness.
And if you feed sufficiently on the ideas of the Work you are able to
guard this inner place that we spoke of and then events that formerly
dragged you down into negativeness no longer have that power because
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you begin to have the power of the Work, as I have often told you.
Do not try to find the Will of God in life. The Lord's Prayer begins
with the idea that God's Will is not done on this Earth but may be done
for you.
We spoke last time about making shoes and how the Work had
leather to sell to make new shoes. We also spoke about how our lifeshoes wear out—at least, in certain cases, because some people seem
satisfied with their life-shoes. One ancient teaching of esotericism
was given under the name of Hermes. From this arose the term
"hermetically sealed" which was used in esoteric alchemy. Esoteric
alchemy was based on the idea that Man as base metal could be transformed into gold—i.e. that Man regarded as some metal, say lead, as
he is at his present stage, could become by some knowledge and the
practice of it turned into gold. This was esoteric alchemy. Exoteric
alchemy was based on the idea that actual lead could be turned into
gold, which is a possibility. A hermit was a person who followed the
teaching of Hermes and sought to seal himself off from the effects of
life by going into a cave or desert. This is not the idea of the Work. It
would be getting rid of life artificially. We have to seal ourselves from
the effects of external life when they are actually happening to us.
Here comes in the idea of practising non-identifying. With what, by
the way, are you identified at this moment? Of course, without selfobservation you have no idea. Without it one is simply identified.
The state remains in darkness. It is not brought into consciousness.
In general, when such is the case, at most moments one is not making an
effort to separate oneself from the effects of external life, and so there
is nothing sealed. Such a person is not living consciously. How can
we say that such a person is working? But he will not recognize that he
is behaving in this way unless he lets light into his inner darkness—
i.e. observes his state. When you do not know how you behave, all
this is dark to you. Yes, you are doing it all the time, but you do not
know that you are doing it. This is the strange thing. You are not
conscious. You are asleep to yourself. It is correct in this case to say
the person is a machine, a mechanical person. Now in a machine
nothing is sealed, nothing is made tight against the impact of external
things. It is turned by life, as a machine is turned by a belt.
Let us return to what was said at the beginning of this paper
that each one of us must become a channel for the teaching of this
Work. To become a channel in this sense the Work must be sealed
off from life—otherwise life will keep changing it. So one must never
put the hand on the mud of one's feet and bring it up to one's eyes.
The understanding of life is one thing and the understanding of this
Work is another thing. Life must not prevail over or stand higher
than the Work. A man in this Work is a man who in spite of external
circumstances, whether they are helpful or riot, continues to work. Life
does not shake his understanding of the Work. His eyesight, which in
this case means insight, maintains him. Esoterically there are two kinds
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of blindness. There are the blind people whom Christ healed—people
who are blind internally. And there are the blind who have had their
inner sight awakened and now are blind to external life. We know that
we can take a thing from a life point of view and from a Work point
of view. When one takes something as work the result is different.
There is a higher level of understanding above that on which one's feet
rest. On this level one realizes that everything that happens to one in
life is the best thing that could happen to one, if one takes it as work
—as a means of development. You realize in a practical way how you
are created a self-developing organism. You no longer take life as an
end in itself or expect it to be as you wished, but you take it as a means
to an end. I bring in here once more the phrase that to an intelligent
person neither life nor one's own life can be understood in terms of
itself. An additional idea is necessary. Have you ever meditated on
this when you were in life-difficulties? Have you glimpsed that they
may be just what you need?
In ancient myths many esoteric ideas were introduced in the
form of allegories which if taken literally seem nonsense, but if taken
psychologically have meaning. You remember when Odysseus
landed on the island of Circe he was given by Hermes a magic herb
which protected him against her enchantment although his companions
were turned into swine by her spells. Do you think this was an actual
herb? Maybe—perhaps aconite. But I fancy that this Work, if it
were really taken into oneself, would begin to have the same effect
—namely, to protect you from the enchantments of life, from its illusions,
from its mirrors. You remember the Work-myth that we are all in a
hall of mirrors? In it everyone is rushing, as they think, straight ahead,
to progress, but owing to the mirrors constantly changing their angle
everyone is only going round and round in a repeating circle. A man
may already feel something of this. I mean, that we may think that we
are tricked by life and not merely blame people or things. Yet without
the ideas of the Work we have no way of understanding this right
suspicion. I was turning over some notes the other day written long
ago and came across this passage which I will quote. It was concerned
with a man who had recently joined the Work. He said he had the
impression when he returned from any entertainment or social function
that he had been tricked, not by the entertainment or by his hostess, but
by something he only felt dimly but it was always present with him,
some power that made him feel rather a fool and seemed to use him for
purposes of its own and yet not malevolent so much as business-like
and practical—acting for its own purposes amongst people who are
foolish enough to let themselves be hypnotized by it. I quote this
because it seems to me that here you have a man who is beginning to
have traces of Magnetic Centre. He feels in some way that he is being
used by some power which he cannot resist and which is tricking him.
I would say that if a man begins to feel that life is tricking him, if he
begins to feel this Hall of Mirrors, he is already beginning to reach a
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stage in which this Work and its ideas could become useful to him. I
mean, that he might understand that life and his own life cannot be
understood in terms of themselves but need another interpretation.
So the Work might be of use to such a person.
(Quaremead, Ugley, March 9, 1946
A NOTE ON THE DIFFICULTIES OF GIVING
OUT AND RECEIVING ESOTERIC TEACHING
To-night I will speak about the difficulties of esotericism, both
from the point of view of its being given and of its being received. We
might imagine human life on Earth as comparable to some vast hotel
into which air has to be blown to keep people alive. This ventilatingsystem can be compared with the Conscious Circle of Humanity trying
to introduce air or spirit into the people in this enormous hotel—
otherwise the people in this hotel would gradually die. Such a danger
exists now. If this air were cut off people would actually die—that is,
if mankind were cut off from higher levels.
In the Gospels it is said that a man must be born of air. The word
in the Greek for air or spirit is the same. In some of the ancient
Gnostic writings Man is divided into different classes from the standpoint of esotericism—that is, into more or less mechanical. There is,
for example, the hylic man, the lowest type of Man, which we would
call No. 1 Man. The word 'hylic' comes from a Greek word meaning
matter or wood. Such a man is a wooden man—a fairly good definition,
if you come to think of it. The next class was the pneumatic man—
the air-man. In the Greek the word ττνεΰμα means air or spirit.
A pneumatic man is thus a man who has spiritual understanding as
distinct from literal, material or wooden understanding. Such a man
may perhaps see life spiritually as a combat between Good and Evil
rather than only as a means of gaining his own advantage. Perhaps he
sees life as the Will of Man fighting against the Spirit of Evil in a
Universe of mystery. In any case, he sees life in a different way from
the hylic or wooden man. We can understand Christ's words, that a
man must be born of spirit or air, in the sense that he must come into an
entirely new understanding. The Work gives us a different view of life.
In seeking to make us take ourselves and life in a new way it is spiritual
in that it seeks to transform us from the purely material standpoint.
I will add here in parenthesis that the Gnostic Schools preceded the
advent of Christ by one or more centuries and anticipated his coming,
and that in the Gospels there are one or two purely Gnostic parables
such as that of the Unjust Steward. 'Gnostic' comes from γνώσις
which means simply 'knowledge'—that is, it was a term that referred
864
to certain schools of knowledge that were not purely material—i.e.
not business schools. In this Commentary I will use the term 'spiritual
man' in the Gnostic sense as distinct from a materially-minded sensebased or wooden man. The trouble in using this term is that it has
been so over-used. As I said, through the Work one can have a
spiritual understanding about the meaning of life quite different from
the literal, wooden interpretation of life. Things have another meaning.
In other words, we get to that point in which we realize that life as
transmitted through our ears and sight is the outer appearance, not
the reality, of things. We spoke last time about the Hall of Turning
Mirrors. Humanity rushes, as it thinks, forward. Actually the mirrors
turn and Humanity goes round and round. This especially applies to
the hylic man who, so to speak, sees his future always in front and
pursues this phantasy. He is immersed in life : he is identified with
everything that happens in life and so he takes life as it appears and so
as an end in itself. But nothing in life is what it appears to be.
Now the Work teaches that the Conscious Circle of Humanity
are sowing into life spiritual ideas—namely, ideas that separate us
from the power of external life as seen, as read of every day in the
papers, as experienced in our ordinary domestic situations. It has to
make and keep going a connection through which higher influences
can reach Man asleep. There is another interpretation and through
it another feeling of life and of one's own life which can begin through
understanding this Work, and this comes from the Conscious Circle
of Humanity who give out influences different from life. Where
there is no vision the people die. To-day, when vision is ceasing, the
power of external life, of machines and war, increases. Man must serve
one or the other. Without vision, without the influences from Conscious
Man, Humanity is enslaved by outer life. Because it has no inner life,
having given up the idea of religion, it has nothing with which to resist
outer life. When there is no inner life one passes into the power of
outer life completely. Man becomes helpless—a creature of massmovements, mass-politics, of gigantic mass-organizations. Certainly
we can suppose that ants must have no inner life. Some people say:
If there be such a thing as the Conscious Circle of Humanity, why do
they not appear openly and tell everyone exactly what to do? As a
matter of fact, they have always been telling people what to do in
different teachings and religions all through the ages, and some have
appeared. But they cannot compel Man, they cannot have policesystems, they cannot force people to awaken, by torture, because Man
is created a self-developing organism. Any religious system of force
is at once a dead system. You cannot make a man awaken by external
force or compulsion. A man can only begin to awaken from his own
understanding and his own will to awaken—which begins when he
sees his state. For that reason the Conscious Circle of Humanity is
limited by higher laws than those on this Earth. It has therefore to
work indirectly. The forces of life can work directly and violently on
865
people by means of police-systems and guns and all the savagery that
we have seen in this century and indeed throughout history on a
smaller scale, but such compulsion does not wake a man internally,
it does not lead to self-development, it does not make Essence grow. I
am saying all this in connection with what was said recently that we
have to keep the Work in a separate place in ourselves and guard it
from the influences and appearances of life. This is impossible unless
people understand eventually as much as they can of what this Work
teaches—otherwise they will fall into various deep pits of thinking
derived from life and not from the Work. They will say: "Why does not
God or this so-called Conscious Circle help Humanity?" They will
say: "Why is not something done straight-forwardly and plainly?
Why are not people told exactly what to do and made to do it?" But
a man can only grow through his own choice and his own understanding and from inside, because it is the individual man in himself, the
essential man, that the Work and all other esoteric systems seek to
awaken. It is the internal, not the external man, that must grow. For
this reason the Work must be kept separate and guarded in our minds.
I spoke recently about the foot and the eyes and what they mean
psychologically—that is, esoterically. I said you must not let your hand
touch your foot or shoes and carry mud up to your eyes, because this
is sin. Sin meant originally in the Greek to miss the mark. The mud
on your foot—the mud of life—must not be mixed up with your understanding of the Work. We all lie mechanically and so we do not accept
it. This is mud on the feet. We all justify ourselves and think we do
not. It remains dark to us—this is mud. Above all, we identify, and
never see it. We identify with our suffering. We feel undersized
at one moment and oversized at the next. We take our lives as they
have turned out as our basis—what we rest upon in thinking or feeling
what we are. This is mud. The wrong feeling of 'I' is mud. We
all take our self-merit as valuable : it is mud. We have many ideas of
superiority: this is mud. Everything from False Personality is mud.
Every interpretation of life, as appearance, as seen, without any transforming ideas, is mud. Mud, therefore, is a long study. But I find it
too difficult to give you a handbook on mud—simply because mud is
our way of taking life and its results on one's imagination of oneself,
and the Work is something quite different. If we could see internally the
meaning of our lives and the kind of people we are in the light, the
consciousness, of the Work, if we could lift our level, if we could
see what it means that we cannot do—then indeed we would see no longer
merit on our feet but mud. The worst kind of mud is formed by various
ways of thinking we can do—i.e. that we are right—arid by feeling
merit for it. We spoke recently about suffering and how the Work
teaches us that we have nothing real to sacrifice save our suffering and
indignation. That suffering, that negativeness, that long, unchecked,
making of inner accounts of the results of internal considering, of not
being rightly appreciated—all that is indeed mud in the light of the
866
Work. It is an Augean Stable of filth through which a river of water
must flow to cleanse it. River is water : water is esoteric truth. It
is still a curious matter how people take filth in the wrong way. I
mean, they do not see the filth of their False Personality, of merit, of
superior feelings, of self-complacency. When a man feels the power of
the Work-ideas, he begins to see internally. His inner sight opens and
he then makes contact with the Conscious Circle of Humanity. He
receives influences different from those entering his senses from life.
But he must keep his feet washed. When Christ washed the feet of his
disciples, it meant that his teaching, if understood and followed, cleansed
the external man, the external woman, from the mud of False Personality. Try to bring the Work into your minds when you feel negative
and see what it means for yourselves to "wash the feet".
When a man feels the Work and senses its meaning, the sight
that he now has psychologically is different from the sight that he
has had from the foot. He now sees Smith as his foot, so to speak.
He sees the mud of his foot, but he must not lift that mud up to his
eyes which are viewing a different order of meaning, a different world,
a different level of consciousness. There are many phrases in the Old
Testament about this. I quote one passage:
"And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he
lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over
against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went
unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay, but as captain of the host of the Lord
am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did
worship, and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?
And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, Put off thy
shoe from off thy foot for the place where on thou standest is
holy. And Joshua did so."
(Joshua V 13-15)
This means that he lifted up his spiritual eyes and saw that he was
confronted with a sword—i.e. that he was confronted with spiritual
truth which was contrary to the way he was trying to go. Sometimes
we may have such an experience ourselves when we lift up our eyes in
this sense. We may see that we are going quite contrary to the truth
of this Work—that we are going with our foot when we should go with
our eyes. The very fact that he is told to look up (he lifted up his
eyes) means that he no longer looks down at his feet. He becomes
aware of another path to follow, quite different from that which he
would have followed if he had been looking downwards at his feet.
Self-Remembering is lifting up the eyes. David said: "I will lift up
mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help." (Psalm 121).
To lift your eyes up in this Work is to remember yourself—i.e. to have
insight into its meaning—because the spiritual eyes are inside, not
outside. We speak in this Work of the inner senses. When a man
remembers himself he gathers about him all the Work that lies in
him and all his understanding of it. This is his most supreme form of
867
Self-Remembering. He then sees the issue with new eyes and all that
the foot was muddy with—namely, all that he was identified with
and taking personally, all his life-resentments and internal accounts and
useless suffering, and all the rest of it. All this vanishes as if it were
nothing when seen through the spiritual eyes, the spiritual insight.
From the standpoint of esotericism we are all blind, looking down at
our feet. When Christ healed the blind it meant not merely something
literal but something psychological. "Whereas I was blind, now I see."
Paul had to be struck blind before he could see. This Work is to make
us see. One has first to see one's foot, so it begins with self-observation.
Through Smith observing Smith, which is his foot, and separating, he
enters possibly another range of influences and perhaps begins to make
contact with the influences of this Work. This is practical work. But
it must be kept separate from the feet, and the mud of the feet must
never be brought up by the hands to the eyes.
Quaremead, Ugley, March 16, 1946
FURTHER NOTE ON SEALING ONESELF FROM LIFE
At a recent meeting here we spoke further about the question of
sealing ourselves from the effects of life. I spoke last week about inner
stop. This is a Work-phrase and it means that there are certain situations in which we must stop impressions from taking a negative form.
We must stop this internally as an act of the Work. I said that supposing
you see someone in this Work whom you do not like, and every time
you see this person you allow negative impressions to fall on you, and
accept them and so identify with them, the result will be that sooner or
later you will discharge these negative impressions in words and deeds
on someone else or on the person whom you dislike. Your dislike is
nourished by what it feeds on and what it feeds on is your continual
reception of unpleasant ideas about this person. So, if you take in
unpleasant impressions, eventually you will have to give them out.
Inner stop means that you do not allow the impressions to have an
effect on you. You do not argue about them but you simply stop them
inside. The other point that was mentioned was that we have to make
ourselves passive to life. Things do not go the way that we expect
them to go and as a result we are continually upset. To make oneself
passive to life is of course a very great matter. We have to begin to try
to make ourselves more passive to what happens and this requires
great inner activity. It requires a very conscious relationship to
oneself. In my case it means to make Nicoll passive to what happens
so that what he experiences is something that I do not accept necessarily.
You will see at once that unless I can make a distinction between 'I' and
868
Nicoll I cannot make myself passive to life. If I take Nicoll as 'I' and
'I' as Nicoll, then I will be always under the domination of life and
its changing events. I will be simply a mechanical man.
Now it has been said very often that this Work must be protected
from life just as small children must be protected. How will you
protect the Work from life so that it can grow and develop ? If your
name is Smith, you must protect the Work from Smith. This means
that you can only protect the Work in yourself if you can separate
from your mechanical Personality. You cannot add the Work to
Smith. You have to start with Smith and begin to see Smith and to
become different from Smith. Then you can make a place in yourself
for the Work, because otherwise Smith, who will never understand the
Work, will always pull it to pieces and destroy it. The Work starts
with inner separation from your Personality. Your Personality has been
acquired through the Third Force of life and the Third Force of life
will keep it active—that is, life will keep, in my case, Nicoll, in its power.
I have to separate from Nicoll: I cannot straightway overcome Nicoll
because Nicoll is very powerful in comparison with 'I' for a long time.
But the very act of beginning to see Nicoll, in my case, makes something
else in me which is not Nicoll. This new thing which is separated from
Nicoll is a part of me that can grow and receive and understand the
Work, but for a long time this small, detached part of me must endure
Nicoll and Nicoll will constantly take charge. Self-observation, in
my case, is the seeing of Nicoll. All this occurs to every one of you—
or at least it can if you observe yourselves. Observing 'I' does not
identify with what it observes. I observe myself but that does not mean
that I can change what I observe. Something in me begins to observe
me. This 'something', which is Observing 'I', is the starting-point of a
new place, which leads to Deputy-Steward, Steward, and Real 'I'
or Master. But if nothing in me has ever observed me, and if, simply, I
am always myself, the Work cannot start in me. I will be unable to
make any inner stop in myself except from outside social reasons such
as fear of loss of reputation in which case it is not 'inner stop'. I will
never understand where the Work begins. Certainly, I will never be
able to make Nicoll passive. I will be Nicoll all the time.
When a man begins to observe himself genuinely, when he begins
to distinguish between this outer and inner, between his feet and the
mud on them and his eyes, his insight, he then begins to enter the Work
genuinely. He may have thought he was in the Work years before.
He begins to see what his task is. Whereas he was blind, he now begins
to see. He has insight into himself. He begins to see his feet which have
carried him anywhere.
Whenever you take every psychological event in you as 'I', such as
an unpleasant train of thought, or an unpleasant mood, you put the
feeling of 'I' into it. You take it as yourself, as 'I', not as IT. Some
people identify with all their thoughts and moods and feelings and
sensations. They say 'I' to them all. They do not understand the Work.
869
By an act of Self-Remembering you draw the feeling of 'I' out of these
inner states. But even self-observation can partly do this, because, if
I observe a state in myself, I am no longer completely that state of
mind. If I observe an unpleasant train of thought in myself I no
longer identify completely with that unpleasant train of thought. Now
identification is putting the feeling of 'I' into whatever happens. You
can identify with your negative states—that is, you can take them as
'I'. If your name is Smith, instead of saying Smith is negative, you
say: "I am negative."
You can reach a stage in this Work in which you begin to have a
feeling of freedom from your moods, your emotions, and your thoughts.
You observe them starting off, but you do not go with them, because
you do not feel that they are you—that is, they are not 'I'. You may
not be able to stop them. The Work does not say that you can stop
your moods and thoughts just like that. It says that you can separate
from them of observe them. It is quite true to say that you may get
tired of your thoughts or your moods or your feelings. This may be
simply that they wear out and will repeat themselves or it may mean
that you have reached a stage in your consciousness of yourself in which
you have something else in you that gets tired of them. Some negative
emotions are certainly so difficult to deal with that it is a good thing
that they wear themselves out. Yet if this happens unconsciously without
any attempt at self-observation they will renew themselves after a short
time. But if you have practised self-observation you will remember
about them next time they come round. This is called Work-memory
—that memory that comes from self-observation, which is a special
form of consciousness. Self-observation is a conscious act. You will
know that you have been through this or that before and that these
states lead nowhere and so you will not identify with them so fully as
you did formerly. This means that you begin to become sealed to a very
small extent from their power, and later on in the Work you may become
almost completely sealed from the power of certain old trains of thought,
certain old moods, certain old feelings. You will not consent to them,
you will not believe them. You will say: "I have been here before,"
and remember what happened and quickly depart. You will know
better some evil places in your psychological country. A state is a place.
Psychological places can be re-visited, but we are told what places to
avoid—that is, what states to separate from—to seal ourselves from.
But self-observation is the first necessity. What is self-observation? Let
us imagine a play going on and a large audience looking at it, absorbed
by it. This is yourself and your many 'I's and the stage is life. When
you observe yourself you turn round and look at the audience.
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Quaremead, Ugley, March 23, 1946
THE IMPORTANCE OF OBSERVING MECHANICAL
DISLIKING
In the recent Commentaries the main subject has been the sealing
of oneself from life. The Work cannot be formed in a person if he puts
it right on the wayside of his life. The seed of the Work will not grow
if it is scattered on the wayside, as is clearly shewn in the parable given
by Christ of the Sower and the Seed in which it is said that "the sower
went forth to sow, and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and the
devil came and devoured them." The devil, of course, is ordinary life
and the world of the senses, and so the outer mechanical side of us
which is occupied with all the cares and anxieties of life. We understand so far that the Work must be protected in us from outside effects
and must gradually penetrate more interiorly until finally it leads to
contact with Higher Centres and Real 'I'. In this connection at a
recent meeting we spoke about things that help to isolate us from the
outer influences of life. All that the Work teaches comes in here. First
we spoke about how knowledge of our Being helps because we no
longer trust ourselves or take ourselves for granted or live on the surface
of ourselves but begin to realize how we are many and how there are
very dangerous 'I's in us from which we must separate. The next
point was how we must practise non-identifying. Then we spoke
about the importance of remembering oneself in the midst of life and
through that feeling the difference between life and oneself. SelfRemembering is, of course, the supreme thing to use. And finally we
spoke about how necessary it was to stop internal considering, which
always arises from life-situations and which keeps us down in mechanical
'I's which cannot possibly understand the Work and will only destroy it.
It is obvious then that we have to create a special place for the reception of the ideas of this Work. To-night I will add one or two other
comments on this question of how we must begin to seal a place in
ourselves from life. I will mention first mechanical liking and disliking.
If a person has very strong disliking he will only reinforce his Personality. When you reinforce your Personality you do not seal yourself
from life but increase your vulnerability to life. Some people admire
their strong dislikes and prejudices but that is a mistake.
Let us reflect for a moment on what is the ultimate object that we
have to attain. Before a man can be re-born, the Work teaches, he must
realize his own nothingness. A person who has very strong dislikes and
justifies them certainly does not realize his own nothingness. He feels
himself very much to be something. It is a good thing to work on one's
mechanical dislikes. But first of all it is necessary to be able to observe
them. This is always the starting-point. If a man could really begin
to feel his own nothingness he would be moving inwardly towards Real
'I' and certainly he could not be so full of mechanical dislikes. A strong
871
feeling of dislike simply strengthens our mechanical Personality. We
are told, in fact, to like what we now dislike, for this is acceptance, and
all acceptance means the giving up of useless suffering. If you persist
in dislike and justify it and make a mass of internal accounts in connection with it, you are simply adding to your mechanical suffering and
wasting your force and stopping the development of understanding.
One of the ways towards feeling one's own nothingness genuinely is to
begin to try to like what we dislike. To live in mechanical disliking is
to live mechanically and in that case your Being will remain exactly
the same and you will therefore attract exactly the same events. Or it
is a good thing to say to yourself: "What is my Being like in regard to
disliking?" This is a practical way of beginning partly to see one's
quality of Being. You get a man, for example, who objects to most
things, who dislikes most people. This arises from his level of Being.
He may find life very difficult but he does not connect it with his state
of Being. He does not see that, as long as all these dislikes and prejudices
and narrow attitudes exist in him, his Being cannot change, and certainly such a man will never be able to get near that point called in the
Work the realization of one's own nothingness. Such a man will
probably think that everyone dislikes him and that if he could only go
to a new environment and start over again things would be different,
but actually his Being would at once attract the same situations and
after a short time in which he felt enthusiastic at meeting new people
he would find the same difficulties. For this reason it is important to
work on one's dislikes, especially on one's strong dislikes, which only
increase the power of the Personality and through that the power that
life has over us. There will then be the question of sealing oneself from
the effects of life, because strong dislikes will connect oneself with
life continually, at every moment. There will be not even a breakwater and certainly not a sea-wall in such a man. In observing your
disliking, start with your strong dislikes and try to make a list of them
and write them down. Then say to yourself: "How is it that I dislike
this person or that nation?" Now I will tell you a way of beginning to
deal with your strong dislikes, once you have observed them. There
are such things as irony and humour. I will only add that it is a good
thing to begin to be ironical about yourself and amused by your
prejudices.
Now you will remember that we have to live more consciously in
life. All this 4th Way is based not on faith, or hope, or love, but on
increase of consciousness. Faith, hope and love, which have been in the
past the basis of three major religions, are not excluded, but the
emphasis in the 4th Way is laid upon increase of consciousness, and
that is why the 4th Way begins with self-observation, the object of
which is to make us conscious of ourselves, of what we are like—namely,
to make us have real impersonal knowledge of our Being. If a man has
strong mechanical dislikes and is controlled by them he is not living
consciously. On the contrary, he is living mechanically. But if a man
872
observes himself and becomes aware of his strong mechanical dislikes
and the prejudices and attitudes that lie behind them, and begins to
struggle with himself and refuse to go with them in a completely identified state, he is then breaking new ground in his own Being, and
attempting to live more consciously. A moment or two of conscious
behaviour in the midst of life each day can give one increase of force
and alter things a little. We can all work for a few moments every day
in a real way. As I have told you repeatedly, we cannot work continuously because we have not sufficient force of consciousness. But
every moment in which you behave more consciously and see clearly
how you might have behaved mechanically gradually increases the
force of consciousness in yourself. You may not see any particular result
for the time being, but you will gradually see the result—that is, you
will gradually notice that some mechanical reactions, mechanical
thoughts, by which you had been chained down hitherto, have less and
less mastery over you and with that will come a change in the feeling
of what you are. You may imagine that you used to be a stronger kind
of person but you are wrong, because your strength lay in mechanical
reactions. You thought your violence was your strength. Violence in
the Work is always weakness. And so you begin to see a little what it
means to realize your own nothingness. It is this realization of nothingness that can attract new Being. But this feeling cannot be invented.
It is no good saying that you are merely nothing for such phrases conceal
a great picture and so belong to False Personality. One feels it but does
not say it. No one speaks of real feelings. When you begin to have
traces of feeling your nothingness and dislike of your hitherto-ness, you
find yourself flexible and so more capable—in fact, you feel released.
Released from what? In my case, I feel released from Nicoll. As I said,
strong Personality is always a sign of weakness in the Work-sense. When
a man cannot separate himself from himself owing to his strong mechanical system of likes and dislikes, of thinking he is right and others are
wrong, he is a weak man in the Work-sense. Such a man cannot
change—he cannot seal himself from life—i.e. from himself—and so
the Work can never find its right soil. The seed of the Work will be
sown by the wayside and so his mechanical centres, the devil, will come
and snatch it up. In general, it is the Personality that is the devil.
Good soil is that which stands behind Personality, that more interior
understanding which is not influenced at every moment by the flickering
events of life and by the mechanical responses of the Personality to
these events.
Let me remind you what self-observation is, because without selfobservation no sealing can take place. A man is composed of many
'I's amongst which sits Observing 'I'. These 'I's are all looking at a
play on the stage: the play represents life. This is the situation of Man
asleep. When a man begins to observe himself, Observing 'I' turns
round from the stage and looks at the audience and notices how each
one is reacting. Some of these 'I's are perhaps jumping up and down
873
and shaking their fists at the play, others are absorbed in it, others
snoring, and so on. Observing 'I' begins to notice all these different
reactions in the audience. This is self-observation.
Quaremead, Ugley, March 3, 1946
COMMENTARY ON ACCEPTANCE OF ONESELF
Someone asked recently: "Is self-observation a moment of accepting
oneself or does that come afterwards?" Self-observation is different from
accepting oneself. The point about self-observation is that it must be
uncritical. It is through the work of Observing 'I' that we begin to
awaken to what we really are and see our contradictions. Owing to
the fact that we are many and that our level of Being is characterized
by multiplicity of 'I's and so by lack of unity—lack of Real 'I'—we live
in fragments which are not joined together and never clearly see that
this is the case. So we are, without seeing it, all very difficult and
contradictory.
To-night I wish to speak about acceptance. Acceptance comes after
the work of uncritical Observing 'I'. Self-observation is not acceptance
but what self-observation does is to present you with a fuller consciousness of yourself and, through the new material that it has collected in
its special memory, you have to come to the question of acceptance that
all these things are true of you. There is however a curious state in us
all owing to which we do not accept ourselves. It is a curious state
because we may know something about ourselves but will not admit it
to ourselves. It does not belong to our general estimate of ourselves,
to what we accept about ourselves, and one reason for this is that the
action of False Personality with its picture of what we pretend we are
like prevents this clear insighted acceptance from taking place. This is
part of our hypnotic sleep. Here comes in the activity of self-justifying.
But at the root of the whole problem lies this question of the hypnotic
sleep of Man, which is kept up by buffers. Buffers prevent us from seeing
contradictions and so prevent us from awakening from sleep. Buffers
replace Real Conscience. If we had Real Conscience we would see and
feel all sides of ourselves together. Such a state would completely
destroy False Personality and all forms of imagination that contribute
to its strength. We would become simpler, nicer. We all have buffers
in every part of a centre but do not see them. Buffers take the place of
Conscience, of Consciousness. As long as we are well-buffered we get
through life fairly easily and have a good sense of our worth. Yet if
buffers were suddenly destroyed in us we would go mad. Now it is only
through the new memory that forms itself around Observing 'I' that we
can begin gradually to see contradictions and become simpler. I spoke
874
some time ago about the dark side of us, the side that we do not properly
admit into our consciousness and both know about and do not. Mr. O.
once said: "We see only one half of things." We have to accept this
dark side. It does not seem to correspond to our estimate of ourselves.
Self-observation is compared, as we all know, with a ray of light let
in to our inner darkness. So we gradually find that we are not what
we thought or imagined. This is the beginning of self-change. We
gradually find that Imaginary 'I' does not fit us properly. We are
trying to be something that we are not and this produces a psychological
inner strain. We do not correspond to ourselves. Here the idea of False
Personality comes in. You say, for example: "Thank God, I am not
like that publican." You may remember the parable. If you say this
you are lying to yourself through the action of False Personality which
always lies to you and always seeks to be superior to others. You are
like that publican. You are no better and no worse than that publican.
How can a person gain any peace, any inner balance, if all the time
he is saying in so many words: "God, I thank thee, that I am not as
the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get"? And imagine
calling in God who is defined as "living and active, and sharper than
any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and
spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and
intents of the heart." (Heb. IV 12.) Whatever we may understand by
God, we may be quite sure that we can hide nothing from this supreme
force of consciousness and that all our buffers, all our pictures, our
pretences, all our inner lies, and everything to do with False Personality,
all this is nothing but so much dirt. As we are, we live on one side of
a circle. We live in the front or the back. So we cannot walk round
the full circle of Being. Wc only admit part of our Being at a time.
Mr. O. said we must see both sides together. Because we live in a halfcircle of ourselves, and the other half is buffered off and not accepted
in consciousness, we are easily upset. Do you think there is anything
that we can be accused of that is not to some extent true? I cannot
believe that a man who has become conscious of the full circle of
himself would lose anything save the valueless things of False Personality.
Would not this give such a man a greater inner stability? Such a man
would no longer have buffers—and let me remind you here that once
a buffer is destroyed it can never re-form itself. I fancy that such a man
would never be rendered useless by anything that was said to him, that
might in another man offend his self-love, his vanity, his pride, and
produce endless hatreds and recriminations and jealousies.
When people talk to me about their private difficulties and their
hidden life I do not find anything astonishing because I have learned
through this Work that all these things are also in me and that it is
useless pretending they are not. Do you remember that the other person
who prayed said: "God be merciful to me a sinner," and it was said:
"This man went down to his house justified rather than the other."
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Notice, not self-justified, but justified of God. No one can feel his own
nothingness unless he accepts this other half of the circle. Then he will
feel no illusions about himself and in a quite strange way he will feel at
peace. He will feel stronger, not weaker, and it is then that he will be
shewn what he has really to work at and transform because he is then
no longer building on the sand of False Personality.
Quaremead, Ugley, April 6, 1946
FURTHER NOTE ON ACCEPTANCE OF ONESELF
PRELIMINARY NOTE ON SILENCE
The Work says much about the practice of Inner Silence. One must
practise the sealing of oneself from oneself, as regards mechanical
talking—the sealing of oneself from one's mechanical self, from mechanical talking, from scandal, bad talking, which makes it so difficult to
seal oneself from oneself. The Work can only grow from what is sealed
in oneself and protected from life. We can know many things about
one another, but never speak of them. One rule of the Work is that
when we meet each other, accompanied by strangers, we do not
recognize each other. This is an example of silence. I will speak
further of this, and what the intention of it means, at a later meeting.
Ordinarily—that is, mechanically—everyone blurts out how he or she
saw so-and-so with so-and-so. This is mechanical and usually scandalous talking. This is what is meant by the verse in the Book of
Proverbs: "The wicked man speaketh with his feet." (Prov. VI 13.)
*
*
*
At a recent meeting it was said that one must not work against one's
Being until one has accepted it. It must be understood that this means
something on a very big scale. We have, of course, as we are, to try
to work on our Being according to what the Work teaches us to do
in that respect. I find this very difficult to explain. Let me try to give
some approximate example. Let us take mechanical talking about
which the Work speaks so much. If I do not accept the fact that I talk
mechanically I will not be able to change it. I will say that I work
against mechanical talking in myself, that I always do my best not to
talk mechanically, yet at the same time, if you can see what I mean, I
am not necessarily accepting that I talk mechanically. I am still
working from False Personality—therefore my work will be unreal.
Some people, Mr. Ouspensky once said, work all the time in a kind of
dream. They do not really see, he added, what they are working on.
For this reason he emphasized so much that we have to see this other
side which we keep in darkness and do not properly accept. As was
876
explained, this is due to the curious action of buffers in us which
prevents us from seeing what we are really like and what we have in
ourselves. Things have to be driven home into us before we can find
the strength really to see and change ourselves. That is why sometimes
it is very useful to be told by your teacher that, for example, you talk
mechanically. It becomes a shock, although in a sense you have
admitted that you do, but you do not do anything about it. When a
person tells you that he knows quite well that he is a liar and admits
it quite easily, you may be quite certain that he has not accepted the
fact that he is a liar. If he really understood emotionally that he is a
liar he would never mention it just like that. As I said, the action of
buffers is very curious because it keeps us in a sort of half state. We
both know and we do not know. But the actual fact has not yet been
driven home into our consciousness that we are liars and lie practically
every time we open our mouths. Just in the same way a man can
acknowledge that he has many different 'I's in him, he may talk glibly
about it all, but he does not yet accept it. He does not see emotionally
that it is quite true that he is not one but many different people. In
such a case the Work rests on the surface of such a person and has not
yet penetrated and become real to him. He may say that he observes
himself every day but he is not really observing himself. He imagines
he observes himself and so he lives in Imaginary 'I'. The Work has
to penetrate into all centres eventually. The great problem of the
Work is how to awaken the Emotional Centre. When the Emotional
Centre is awakened your whole theme of yourself changes. You see
that you do not remember yourself; you see emotionally that you do
lie, that you do speak mechanically; you see emotionally that you do
not work on yourself but all the time pretend that you do. It is the
awakening of the Emotional Centre that drives things home so that we
realize these strange words: "Thou art the man." David, after he had
taken Bathsheba for his wife, having caused her husband Uriah to be
slain in the forefront of the battle, was visited by the prophet Nathan,
who told him a parable. The parable was about a rich man with many
flocks and a poor man who had only one ewe-lamb. Although the rich
man had many sheep he took the poor man's one ewe-lamb and killed
it when he needed a meal for a guest. On hearing this David said in
anger: "The man that hath done this is worthy to die." Whereupon
the prophet said to him: "Thou art the man." (II Sam. XII 7.)
You know how difficult it is when an accusation is brought home
to you, how you turn and twist and justify yourself and find excuses.
In other words, you cannot accept it. This Work becomes very real
and grim as people advance in it and that is why acceptance is so
necessary. Acceptance destroys Personality and all imagination about
oneself and brings one to a new basis from which the Work can start.
But for this to happen, real self-observation must take the place of
imaginary self-observation. Something must be broken in us before we
become sane—before we can begin to awaken.
877
Let us review briefly what this Work teaches us about Man on this
Earth. The Work says that Man on this Earth is asleep and that the
whole world is full of sleeping people and for this reason nothing can
go right with the world. The Work says that this sleep is a strange form
of sleep and calls it hypnotic sleep and here the Work-parable comes
in, in which it is said that there were two farmers who had a great many
sheep. Being very lazy and mean, when they found that some of the
sheep were escaping, they decided to hypnotize the sheep and to tell
them that everything was very beautiful and wonderful and to teach
them to sing hymns and to make them believe that they were all going
to Heaven. Actually all that they wanted was the wool on the sheeps'
backs for their own purposes. This state of hypnotic sleep which
humanity lies in is not outside you but inside you. This is why the
Work says that everyone lives in False Personality and in Imaginary
'I'. If this hypnotic state is to be broken we have to wake up to ourselves and as long as we are governed by False Personality and Imaginary
'I' we shall remain asleep. It is for this reason that the Work teaches
us so much about what we have to do, what we have to observe, and
what we have to work against and separate from in ourselves.
Let us speak for a moment about negative emotions. You know the
Work teaches that the Emotional Centre is dominated by negative
emotions and that this beautiful and wonderful instrument, which if
purified can give us even clairvoyance, is rendered useless by all the
self-emotions arising from False Personality. When people identify
with the infinite variety of their negative emotions they remain in a
state of hypnotic sleep and are used by these two farmers who simply
want their wool and their flesh, and so it is a good thing to study how
to awaken.
All awakening begins with self-observation through which you
gradually realize that you are not the person you thought you were—that
is, if you accept what your Observing 'I' gradually teaches you about
yourself. All this is called making Personality passive so that Essence
can grow. When you can accept every accusation and insult without
reacting violently you are beginning to understand the place from
which this Work can grow and produce another being in you, so notice
what upsets you most violently, what makes you indignant, what makes
you say that you cannot stand it any longer, for this is a very good guide
to self-observation and to what you have to observe. When you begin
to feel your own nothingness you begin to receive the help of the Work
to replace that nothingness by something. So you have to go down a
long way before you begin to go up.
878
Quaremead, Ugley, April 13, 1946
THE PARABLE OF WALKING ON THE WATERS
In a short time we will start the teaching of this Work from the
beginning. At present we will continue to speak of this question of
sealing oneself. I remind you that the Work cannot fall on our ordinary
selves and grow and produce results. A person must feel the Work
as something utterly different from life and all he has learned from life.
You can say it is spiritual, not physical, not material, not outside you,
as life is. For that reason it was said that the Kingdom of Heaven is
within you. We spoke about the meaning of "within" or "inner". As
a practical example it was said that Observing 'I' and the practice of
self-observation move the centre of gravity of consciousness inward.
You begin to see yourself as something outer, acquired, you do not just be
yourself. You begin to see a new you. This is a movement inwards.
To-night I wish to refer to the parable of Christ Walking on the
waters in connection with the idea that we must seal ourselves. We
must seal ourselves sometimes from life and from the way we take life.
They are really the same, but not quite. The man, the woman, easily
upset, must seal themselves from life—that is, from what upsets them.
But this depends whether they can separate from that side which is
upset. So it is a sealing of oneself from life and from one's mechanical
Personality which latter determines for one how one reacts to life, takes
life, judges life, and feels one is right or wrong. In my case I may be
able to seal myself from Dr. Nicoll and the way he takes everything.
That does not mean that I overcome Dr. Nicoll. It means simply that
I have a place, a locked room, a private room, where Dr. Nicoll cannot
enter. Here the Work can grow. After a time, this inner place, gained
through self-observation, when it is strong enough, can no doubt overcome Dr. Nicoll. But at first this is impossible. Yet if I ever get as far
as this a distinction is made—a separation inwardly. I am now two
—not one. No one, the Work says, can shift himself from where he is
unless he divides himself into two—becomes an observing and an
observed side. If you have Magnetic Centre you are in a sense two, but
not yet actually. You have the possibility of the Work. All growth is
by division. One cell divides into two. Man as a self-developing
organism, a cell, must become two first of all. In my case I and Nicoll
must become a very real experience of inner separation. I observe
Nicoll doing things yet am not Nicoll. This is not easy. It is easy to
hear—not easy to do. To do what the Work teaches is one thing: to
hear what it says is another. The second note in the Work-Octave of
personal development is, we are told, to apply what the Work teaches
to ourselves. This is not understood save after long contact with the
ideas and a real struggle about the whole matter. The Work begins to
fight with life in you. People say, for instance: "Oh, the meeting was
all about self-observation and we have heard all that so often." No
879
doubt you have. But have you ever really observed yourself consciously
and uncritically and looked at yourself from this absolutely neutral
angle where no self-justifying or excuses count? Or are you all the time
taking yourself as yourself and thinking it is the only way to take life?
In the parable about walking on the waters we have an idea that
exists in different form in the Work. Suppose we could always remember ourselves. Then we should be at the third level of consciousness and
all that took place lower down at the second level, where in my case
Nicoll exists, the so-called waking state of consciousness, would have no
power over me. That is, you would be sealed from your mechanical
ways of thinking and feeling and acting and taking life and judging it
and so on. So you would, as it were, walk on yourself. Now imagine that
you suddenly identify. Then you would sink. Where would you sink?
You sink down to the ordinary level of yourself-—in my case to Nicoll—
to how you take life, view life, think of life, judge life, as you were
taught—that is, as your Personality was laid down in you—to what you
acquired.
Let us quote the parable:
"Jesus therefore perceiving that they were about to come and
take him by force, to make him king, withdrew again into the
mountain himself alone. And when evening came, his disciples
went down unto the sea; and they entered into a boat, and were
going over the sea unto Capernaum. And it was now dark, and
Jesus had not yet come to them. And the sea was rising by reason
of a great wind that blew. When therefore they had rowed about
five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they behold Jesus walking on
the sea, and drawing nigh unto the boat; and they were afraid.
But he saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid. They were willing
therefore to receive him into the boat: and straightway the boat
was at the land whither they were going." {John VI 15-21)
Every parable in the Gospels is about something in this Work.
Suppose that you have to make some parable about Self-Remembering
or about False Personality and so on, you would find yourself writing
parables just as they are in the Gospels. Let us think what this parable
means about Christ walking on the waters. It is more fully explained
in one of my chapters on the Gospels but we can understand to a certain
extent what it means now. Notice that Christ was tempted to become
a king on Earth and then he went up into a high mountain. What do
you think this means? Always understand that Christ was tempted as
we are. It would be a great temptation to be made King of the Earth.
But he went up into a high mountain. Surely that means that he
remembered himself, remembered what he had to do, what his task was.
Exactly the same idea in different images comes into the next part of
the parable. The storm arising at sea represents the storm that arises
in us all, let us say, when we get negative, when we identify. Christ
walking on the waters represents a state of being in which he could walk
on all these stormy waters of himself and not sink. The two ideas, going
880
up into the mountain (after he was tempted to be King of the Earth)
and again, how he walks on the stormy waters of himself, are similar.
They represent the state of Self-Remembering. And the interesting
thing is that when Christ says: "It is I", the Greek construction is
very
emphatic. Literally it means: "I am I" (εγώ ειμί), which, as you
know, is the definition of Jehovah who said once: "I am that I am".
The
third state of consciousness which none of us has attained except in
flashes is that state in which one remembers oneself, one becomes 'I' above
all the other little 'I's in oneself. So you can see that these illustrations
in these parables arc about Self-Remembering shewing how Christ had
the complete power of remembering himself, of finding Real 'I' in
himself, which gave him power over all his life-'I's. And this of course
means that he could seal himself from himself and the effects of life on
his human self.
Two sides of Self-Remembering are spoken about in this parable.
When Jesus withdrew himself into the mountain he remembered himself
in what we can call a passive way—that is, he withdrew himself from
himself and reached a higher state of consciousness in which no further
contact existed with his lower 'I's. Then we find that the other side of
Self-Remembering is also mentioned. He went down into the stormy
sea and walked on it. One of the greatest teachings of this Work is that
we are not properly conscious and that we cannot do anything with
ourselves in a real way until we begin to reach the higher level of
consciousness called Self-Remembering, Self-Consciousness, SelfAwareness. You will remember that I spoke to you all about this
recently when I said that the Driver has to climb up to a higher level
—otherwise he cannot drive his horse and carriage. The practice of
Self-Remembering is possibly not so difficult as you think. It is a rising
above one's stormy seas, above one's Personality, jealousies, envies,
anxieties, cares, and all the rest. Many times it has been said to you
that unless you believe that there is a higher level both in yourself and
in the categories of mankind—i.e. a conscious circle of men—you will
not be able to remember yourself. If you have Magnetic Centre in you
you have always known in a strange way that there is something higher;
but Magnetic Centre by itself can only lead you to the Work and cannot
keep you in it. If you hear the Work with your mind and not with your
external ears, you begin to see what it is about, you begin to find in
yourself endless verifications. Through the power of the Work taking
the place of Magnetic Centre you can begin to remember yourself, but
if you take life as itself you will sink—i.e. once a difficulty arises in life
and you feel yourself badly treated you will identify with all the small
'I's in yourself that have been formed in you by your upbringing. So
you will fall down, you will sink into the waters of your own Personality,
and then you will forget yourself and become just an ordinary mechanical
man serving Nature. Merely to try to remember oneself by withdrawal,
by going up into the mountain, is not enough. This will certainly give
you an idea of what you have to do, what your real aim is, but then,
881
having heard with your inner mind what you have to do, you will have
to go out into life and walk on the waters and not sink. But let me
repeat, as long as you take yourself as yourself, you will never get
anywhere in this Work. If you cannot observe yourself, you cannot shift
from where you are.
Quaremead, Ugley, April 20, 1946
A NOTE ON FALSE PERSONALITY AND
IMAGINARY 'I'
Let us once more think about the Three Lines of Work. We are taught
that a person must do the three lines of Work sooner or later, otherwise
nothing can ensue. The first line of Work is work on yourself through
self-observation, and applying the ideas of the Work practically to
yourself—that is, not identifying with your negative states, and so on.
The second line of Work is work with other people in the Work and
externally considering them. This line is very important for many of
you at present. The second line of Work depends on seeing a person
as yourself. "I am them and they are me." In the second line of Work
it is necessary eventually that people you are working with in the Work
begin to exist in you and become Work 'I's. "Thou shalt do no
murder" means on the psychological level, as distinct from the literal
level, that you give existence to another in yourself and do not murder
that existence by temporary acts of self-will, This gives a field of force
and is the beginning of forming a Work-accumulator. In the Work this
is possible. In life it is not possible because life divides people through
hatreds, scandals, etc. If you have followed the first line of Work
sincerely you will begin to see that you are not what you imagine. Then,
and then only, can you do the second line of Work rightly. You see that
what you criticize in others exists also in yourself. If you try to do the
second line of Work in a charitable way without having followed the
strict discipline of the first line of Work, if you have not seen that in
yourself exists so much that you criticize in others—you cannot do the
second line of Work rightly. You will do it sentimentally, piously—
that is, in an entirely false way. You will then be awfully kind to a
person whom you really hate, which is a horrible thing. The third line
of Work is about my work and what I am aiming at. It has to do with
how this Work can be carried on, how each of you can help me to carry
on this Work. Some people can do the first line of Work to a certain
extent and also touch the third line of Work, but all three lines are
Equally important.
To-night I wish to speak to you about the first line of Work and to
a certain extent about the second line. Recently it was said that False
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Personality and Imaginary 'I' are two different conceptions in the
Work, although sometimes we have spoken of them almost together as
if they were the same thing. Let us take the conception of False
Personality in us all. No one can do the second line of Work if False
Personality is predominant in him or her. False Personality is the unreal
thing in us. Personality is not really in the same category. All of us
have to have strong Personality in ourselves. For example, we all have
to learn our jobs in life and be able to do something more or less in life.
Personality is the acquired side and the Work says you should have a
good acquired Personality before you can really do this Work, but
False Personality is quite different. I may as a result of my training
have acquired from my Personality a certain knowledge of medicine.
This is quite right. A person who has never learnt anything from life
and cannot do anything in life is not a suitable person for this Work.
People who try to enter this Work, who have done nothing in life, who
know nothing in the ordinary sense, who have never had the patience
to learn anything, who are no good at any jobs in life, are quite unsuitable for this Work. They have not in the faintest degree touched
this level which the Work calls Good Householder. That is why I often
ask, when someone suggests bringing in a new person into the Work:
"What has he or she done?" If I hear that this person has done nothing
at all, has taken up this or that and dropped it and is incapable of
adapting to life in any way, then I am reluctant to accept this person.
We were once upon a time all of us asked in the early days of the Work,
when we tried to introduce a new person: "What is he? What has he
done?" On one occasion that I remember very well I thought that
someone would be suitable and I was cross-examined very severely about
what this person had done, what he was, what he knew. I remember
that I answered that he was a very nice person but had not done
anything at all and I was told that it was quite impossible to have such
a person in the Work. O. said to me on one occasion: "You are trying
to bring in a person, however nice he may be, who has not gone through
the ordinary life-training. Such a person", he added, "will enter this
Work, having failed in life, thinking that here in this Work he will have
an easy time." So you must all understand that in bringing new people
into this Work you must be intelligent and not bring in a lot of tramps
who are no good in life.
Let us continue with the attempt to understand what False Personality means. Every one of us, whether we are good at life or not, has
very strong False Personality. Let us begin by saying that False
Personality is an invention of yourself—a pretence. It is something
unreal in you, which only self-observation, uncritical and sincere, can
modify, and finally make passive. We have been speaking for a long
time about how we are not what we imagine we are. Sometimes I
deliberately work on someone in this connection—i.e. the undermining
of False Personality. When I see it is quite impossible to do anything in
this direction I stop. Sometimes I wait and if nothing happens I know
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at once that this person cannot be touched yet as regards False
Personality—that is, the imaginary feeling that the person has of himself
or herself. In short, there is something of which such people cannot let
go and certainly should not until they have come to that point in the
Work where some other place in them is sufficiently furnished to allow
them to let go of their imaginary ideas about themselves. One interesting thing about a person who is very strongly in False Personality is
this: such people are always on the opposites. They are always
comparing themselves with other people in the sense of feeling better
than they are, or, more rarely, worse. They are always making discriminations from the False Personality about other people. They are,
as it were, dividing people into two classes: "People I approve of and
people I disapprove of."
There was a teaching in mediaeval times based on the word κενωσις
—i.e., emptying yourself of yourself. All the Sermon on the Mount is
about it. Perhaps some of you have read that rather interesting esoteric
book that comes from Sufi literature—The Conference of the Birds. Here
it is related that the Birds set off on a journey, corresponding to the path
of the Work, and when they reach their goal they have lost all their
feathers. If you see what this Work is, you realize that it is a journey,
a path, that you have to follow. We have to lose our feathers. By doing
so we make room for something else to enter us. Something we were
full of becomes emptied and then something else can come in, and that
which comes in is just what will change us. It is impossible for any of
us to add a cubit to our stature by ourselves, but the False Personality
thinks it can and it will fight to maintain itself. I remember one
occasion, when Mr. Ouspensky was talking about the False Personality
and how it can only give us unreal things and only attract unreal things,
unreal people and unreal position, he said: "I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that there was no escape from the labyrinth of
the opposites, of the contradictions, in which we ordinarily live, except
by an entirely new road, unlike anything we have hitherto known, but
where this road began I was unable to say. I could only say that I knew
already as an undoubted fact that beyond the thin film of false reality
there existed another reality from which for some reason we were
separated and it seemed to me that the way to this unknown path might
be found in the East, in some teaching that I knew nothing about."
So you will understand that False Personality gives us false reality
and makes us do things which if we have a deeper understanding we
may hate to do and of which we may feel the futility and yet be unable
to change the course of our lives. When we are in False Personality—in
life—in externals, and so in rivalry—we cannot place ourselves in
internal reality. We are glued to the outer sense of things. A person
then is an outward thing, an appearance of flesh. So one does not see
where or what that person is psychologically—internally—that is, the
Being of the Person escapes one. This is the giddy round of outward
appearance. I mean, it is false reality, and so unhappy. To place
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oneself inside reality, which is always in motion, to adapt to its changing
direction, and to try to grasp it apart from time and change—that
certainly is a movement inwards and a new vision of what is real. A
stiff person with stiff frozen values cannot possibly reach this fluid state
of truth. To such a person truth is stone—inflexible. But to a person
who begins to separate from False Personality and Imaginary 'I' truth
becomes water—that is, relative or flexible—not "either-or", not Yes or
No—but both Yes and No. This redemption from that frozen psychological death that grips so many so early is possible for anyone who
takes the following of the ideas of the Work as more important than
his fixed opinions and psychological habits. I would add here that to
anyone who grasps the Ray of Creation and its tremendous meaning
even a little it will be difficult to sit in his small vanity and pride.
Apparently, from that great diagram, we are curiously unimportant
people—in view of many higher levels of Beings. This emotion weakens
vanity and pride—and so weakens False Personality. So the Work says:
"Unless a man can believe in Greater Mind he is useless in this Work."
Now we come to the conception of Imaginary 'I'. Imaginary 'I is
the imagination that we have a real permanent 'I' that always answers
consciously, behaves consciously and consistently. We imagine that we
are always one permanent person and always the same. Imaginary 'I'
is what gives us a false, unreal sense of unity. The reality that False
Personality and Imaginary 'I' manufacture is that through which we
try to live our lives. On one occasion G. said: "It is the greatest mistake
to think that Man is always one and the same. A man is never the same
for long. He is continually changing and yet he imagines himself to be
the same 'I' all the time. It is difficult for him to accept that from one
moment to another the 'I' in him changes. He is convinced that he is
a unity, a real person. But he seldom remains the same even for five
minutes. We think that if a man is called Ivan, he is always Ivan.
Nothing of the kind. Now he is Ivan, in another minute he is Peter,
and a minute later he is Nicholas or Sergius. And all of you think he
is Ivan the whole time and perhaps you know that Ivan cannot do a
certain thing—i.e. he cannot tell a lie—and then you find that he has
told a lie and you are surprised that he, Ivan, could have done so. In
fact, you will say, perhaps quite rightly, that Ivan cannot tell a lie.
It was Nicholas who lied and when an opportunity presents itself for
this 'I' called Nicholas to be upper-most Nicholas cannot help lying.
You will be astonished when you realize what a multitude of these 'I's,
Nicholas, Peter, and so on, live in one man. If you learn to observe
them there is no need to go to a cinema."
These words of G. make us think again of the definition of the Being
of Man in this Work. The Work says that Man's Being, in this state of
sleep in which he is, is characterized by multiplicity—-that is, by lack of
unity. Instead of having a real unity we have this Imaginary 'I', this
imaginary unity, which is entirely false, and so two people meet together
and hope to be happy, not understanding that they are many, in each
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case about a thousand different women and about a thousand different
men. A woman thinks, let us say, that she is marrying Ivan, but she is
also marrying Nicholas, and all the others, and vice versa.
We will end this paper simply by saying that False Personality is
one thing and Imaginary 'I' is another thing, but they both give us a
false reality. That is why the Work teaches us so much that we must
observe False Personality and observe Imaginary 'I' and try to get
behind this imaginary reality to a deeper reality where things are quite
different.
Quaremead, Ugley, April 27, 1946
COMMENTARY ON ATTITUDES
We have not spoken for some time about attitudes. In the last paper
we spoke about False Personality and Imaginary 'I'. It was said that
these two Work-conceptions are different. Yet sometimes they come
close together. I will review briefly in a slightly different way the
difference between False Personality and Imaginary 'I'. False Personality
is that which gives you an entirely unreal existence and only attracts to
you unreal things. It makes you identify with what is not yourself. On
one occasion I was talking to Mr. Ouspensky about this and he said:
"It is a great handicap to have a long line of descent." I asked him
why this was and he said that people identify with their ancestors and
yet they themselves are born into the world completely free from
ancestors—that is, their real Essence comes into the world quite apart
from the conditions into which it is born. In so many words he added:
"If you feel pride in your origin in Time and Space you will never get
to your real self." I remember that he repeated to me twice that we
have to understand that we are not born through our parents but that
our Essence comes down from the stars as something quite independent
of our origin. In other words, what we have to understand is that in
Self-Remembering we do not remember our ancestry or even our
parents. We came down from an entirely different source. If you want
to see what False Personality is like listen to two charwomen talking
together. One of them says that her grandpapa had a house of his own
and lived in style. The other one will perhaps say that her grandmother
had ten years penal servitude and was in the papers. This curious thing
called False Personality can actually make us feel that we are somebody
because we had at one time or another a very distinguished, very
notorious ancestor who committed several crimes and gave the police
a great deal of trouble. False Personality is a very extraordinary thing
to study both in yourself and in other people.
Now as regards Imaginary 'I', it was said that Imaginary 'I' is the
imagination that you are always one and the same person and that you
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speak consciously on every occasion, that you know what you are doing,
and, in fact, that you can do.
Now we pass to the question of attitudes. All this Work consists in
separating oneself from one's unreal 'I's. False Personality is one unreal
side of us and only attracts unreal things: Imaginary 'I' also attracts
unreal things. But in this work of separating oneself from what is unreal
the Work teaches many accessory ideas to which we have to apply selfobservation. Attitudes are unreal things in us. Each one of you has
certain ingrained attitudes or points of view, from which you regard
everyone else and also regard yourself. They are chiefly connected with
False Personality. Let me give you an example of an attitude. A man
has acquired an attitude which makes him think himself in some way
superior to certain people. When he meets these people his attitude
operates mechanically in him. He does not like these people. Yes, but
he does not like them from attitude, from mechanicalness. Suppose that
I try to make this particular man see the value of some people towards
whom he has this mechanical attitude. I introduce him to them, I begin
to talk about them, what they have done, what they have been through,
and so on. After a time he unbends. He is very surprised to find that
these people are not at all what he thought they were. He will find
they are quite interesting people. What is happening to such a man?
What is happening is that one has got round his mechanical attitude
through which he cannot take in new impressions, and one has, so to
speak, undermined him. Undermined him in what? Undermined his
False Personality, his negative and restricting attitude, and freed him
therefore from part of his mechanical, acquired side. This man will now
feel freer. The very expression of his face will begin to change, his
way of talking will change, and instead of feeling any loss he will feel a
sense of gain.
On one occasion Mr. Ouspensky was talking to me about attitudes.
He said that attitudes are very difficult things to observe in oneself.
He said: "They are laid down very early in us through our acquired
psychology—i.e., through what we have been taught—and they are,
practically speaking, always negative attitudes. He said that what
people call a good education is what gives a person typical negative
attitudes and when these negative attitudes have been properly implanted this young person is said to be properly educated. He said that
in English education as far as he knew great emphasis was laid on boys
and girls in growing up getting good negative attitudes and that as far
as he could see that was the only education that was given. On one
occasion I suggested that some of us should sing him some English seashanties. I was standing near him at the time and he smiled at me and
looked at me and said: "Most of these people have been brought up
with typical negative attitudes. How could they possibly sing seashanties? I could not bear sea-shanties sung with an Oxford accent."
Now negative attitudes become gradually fixed in us and then become
buffers. A typical negative attitude, unless one escapes from it, gradually
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settles down, as it were, and becomes crystallized out as a buffer. Once
it has become a buffer it is very difficult to see. A buffer, I will remind
you, is that which prevents us from seeing contradictions in ourselves.
That is why a well-buffered man is often such a success in life. He
appears to have a strong will. His buffers prevent him from seeing
anything wrong with him and yet such a man from the Work point of
view is a very weak man. He is very low down in the Scale of Being.
Sometimes people have brought to me people for this Work and I have
seen that they have very strong buffers. Then I know that it will be
practically impossible to teach this Work to them because they are too
weak inside. That is, they have nothing behind their facade of buffers
which keep them in good humour with themselves, and if one should
try to destroy a buffer in such people they might literally go mad
because they have nothing internal, nothing behind them, nothing real.
In this Work, we begin with the idea of impersonal self-study—that
is, we begin with the idea that we have to obtain knowledge of our
Being. This can only begin obviously by means of turning round and
looking into ourselves consciously, noticing how we speak and behave
and so on. This is a movement inwards. Only in this way can a man
begin to separate himself from himself. One part of this practice of
conscious self-study is to observe our attitudes. When we reach the
point of being able to observe attitudes to a small extent this actually
starts something going in us which may lead to something strange, to
new thoughts and feelings. So it is said that this Work begins with selfobservation. We none of us know that we have attitudes. In general,
we all take ourselves for granted just as we are and so never see that this
is what we are—that is, that our state of Being attracts what happens
to us the whole time. How many of you have ever realized that things
are your fault? This is quite an easy thought if you take it sentimentally
and pathetically. We surely all know this spurious form of self-blame,
but what I mean is: how many of you have ever seen in a stark naked
way without any self-justifying that something was entirely your fault
and that in so many words: "Thou art the man." ? Because we have this
peculiar illusion about ourselves which is called hypnotic sleep in the
Work we do not imagine that we have any particular attitudes. Now,
as was said, our attitudes are practically always negative attitudes
by means of which we distinguish ourselves from other people and so
stimulate this false conception of ourselves called False Personality. Mr.
Ouspensky once said: "We must get to observe and know all our
negative attitudes. We may in a sense observe our negative attitudes
but we take them as being perfectly right. But," he added, "the point
here is that we really do not see that they are attitudes implanted in us
by our education and by imitation and that they are not really ourselves
at all." He said: "We must not only observe but know well in our
memory what our attitudes are definitely and permanently." And he
added: "Negative attitudes never pay—they simply make you empty.
And when we once realize this we have no right and no excuse for
888
identifying with them." On another occasion he said: "Attitudes never
think. They work automatically. They are like hard places in the
Intellectual Centre, like crystallized thoughts, and since they are
practically always negative they finally become buffers." He once
asked me: "How do you know when a person is speaking from fixed
attitudes?" I said I did not know and he said: "You should know it
at once. You become bored, you begin to yawn, when a man is speaking
from fixed opinion. He is not thinking. Now attitudes are laid down
in the Intellectual Centre and they take the place of real, individual
thinking. They affect the Emotional Centre, but their starting-point is
in the Intellectual Centre. If you see a person full of acquired attitudes
and nothing else, you will feel at once that it is impossible to speak to
this person. That is, you cannot free his thinking from these acquired
attitudes."
On another occasion Mr. Ouspensky said: "If you are full of
negative attitudes you will never be able to get in touch with any of
the higher parts of centres in yourself and so not with any higher level of
Being." He gave an illustration. He said: "When you have a great
many negative attitudes of which you are quite unaware and which
you have accepted as being you, it is just as if you have an enormous
number of overcoats and you keep on wearing all these overcoats all the
time and so it is impossible to reach you. In such a case," he added,
"a man cannot pass through the narrow way of this Work, which is a
question of inner sincerity. He will not be able to get through the
doors and narrow passages unless he begins to discard all these overcoats that he knows nothing about and takes as himself."
I would add that you may be able to observe attitudes in other
people fairly well and we know when a person is speaking from a typical
attitude. It is certainly tiresome. It is far more difficult to observe
typical attitudes in oneself and yet this has to be done. You can notice
it partly by watching your intonation. This is one way out of many.
When you are speaking from attitude you will notice that you are
speaking in a flat dead voice. You will notice this in other people so
try to see it in yourself. Then you may begin to see how ordinarily your
life is made perhaps so unhappy, because of these attitudes which you
have acquired and never seen through.
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Quaremead, Ugley, May 4, 1946
THE STUDY OF MECHANICAL ASSOCIATIONS
Change of Being depends on inner work on oneself. No one can
change their Being without inner Work because unless they can separate
themselves from their level of Being they cannot change and all separation depends on the observation of one's own Being. For example,
science cannot change the level of Being of Humanity or the level of
Being of yourself. Science is something external connected with the
study of the outer world but self-observation is a question of inner study,
the study of yourself. Recently we have been speaking about the study
of False Personality in oneself, the study of Imaginary 'I', and last time
we spoke about the study of attitudes and buffers in oneself. To-night,
amongst other things, I will speak about the study of associations in
oneself.
We all of us have in us a great number of purely mechanical
associations which connect up centres in different wrong ways. These
associations belong to our acquired psychology and so to our Personality.
We can imagine these associations to be composed of a network lying
over the centres and connecting them up in different ways. Then whenever a chain of associations is touched at one point the stimulus will
cause the whole chain of associations to become active. In the study of
associations it is best to begin with the Intellectual Centre. If you admit
a certain thought into your mind it will ring up, so to speak, the
Emotional Centre and all the other centres and so produce automatically
certain feelings, certain movements, and certain appetites. All this
belongs to our mechanicalness. One of the main objects of self-study
through self-observation is to observe our machinery. It takes a long
time for people to realize that what they take themselves as is really
a machine. The Work consists in separation from this machinery.
Habitual chains of association form a very strong part of this
machinery. If you have attained some degree of self-observation,
which means at the same time that you have a certain power of seeing
your machinery, you will be able then to study associative paths between
centres—that is, how one thing rings up another quite automatically.
Centres in us are wrongly connected together by these associations. I
said just now that you should begin to study by observation how
associations automatically work, how a thought can ring up the whole
chain of associations and lead to certain results. It is also possible to
study associations from the side of Moving Centre—for example, you
begin to walk quickly, impatiently, and instantly a whole scries of
emotions and thoughts automatically present themselves. The associative machinery can be studied from the intellectual side or from the
moving side. For example, sitting in a certain posture will automatically
arouse certain associations which will affect the Emotional Centre and
the Intellectual Centre—namely, your feelings, your moods and your
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trains of thought. If you bear in mind that your centres are not free
and do not work in the right way owing in part to all these mechanical
associations that you have acquired, and if you have some degree of
self-observation you will often be secretly amused with yourself in
noticing how some accidentally aroused chain of associations wishes to
grip you and make you identified. If you can notice this you will find
after a time that these automatic chains of associations lose their power
over you and this means that you are really becoming less of a machine
than you were before you began to work on yourself.
As was said, associations make a network round centres. This network is gradually acquired from one's earliest childhood. As a result
centres cannot work properly—i.e. they cannot do their own work. Consequently impressions from the external world cannot fall on the right
place. They connect with things where there should be no connections.
When you begin to realize to a certain extent that you are mechanical
and that you are chained to a machine which is not really yourself at
all, you will be able to see how your life has, amongst other things, been
governed by its automatic associations. You are already separated to a
small extent from yourself as you thought you were. This already is a
great step forward in inner work on yourself. It is also a step towards
Self-Remembering because, as you know, one of the first experiences
of the great meaning of Self-Remembering lies in the realization of
one's mechanicalness. You are not your machine but something else.
You need not take everything in the way you have always taken it,
because you are something else. But this realization that one is not
one's mechanicalness, not one's False Personality, not one's Imaginary
'I', not one's negative attitudes, not one's laid down associations, is
always accompanied by a feeling of pain, or, as Mr. Ouspensky once
said, a sour feeling, and he said on one occasion that very few people
could bear this pain or sour feeling about themselves and so preferred
to fall back into what they had always been. At the same time I would
add that this painful or sour feeling is also accompanied by a feeling of
freedom, a feeling of wonder that one has always been a slave to all
this machinery which one has imagined to be one's real self.
When you have new thoughts in your mind, new ways of thinking
laid down by the Work, you begin to escape from mechanical associations
starting from the Intellectual Centre. These new thoughts, these new
ideas that the Work teaches us, begin to give us a new way of thinking,
a new mind. And this new mind can eventually make right connections
between centres if it is given time enough. I do not see how it is
possible to break mechanical associations without a complete new set
of thoughts, ideas and eventually a new understanding. Life connects
the machinery up all wrongly. It makes people take political sides,
religious sides, and so on, but the influences of the Work produce in a
person quite new associations, quite new connections. This Work is to
make us think in a new way and that means at once that we cannot
think in old ways. If we cannot think in the old ways then a host of
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mechanical chains of associations will be broken. At the moment it is
very interesting to make some observations about mechanical chains of
associations and I would be glad if any of you would be able to give
some actual observations of purely mechanical associations that you
have noticed in yourselves.
Quaremead, Ugley, May 11, 1946
FURTHER NOTE ON FALSE PERSONALITY
In a discussion on the paper about the difference between False
Personality and Imaginary 'I', I noticed one serious mistake. It was
said that Imaginary 'I' is an illusion from birth. A small child has no
Imaginary 'I'. Surely you all know that a small child never says 'I'.
He uses his name—he speaks of himself in the third person. He says,
for example, "Bobby wants this", or "Baby wants this". Surely there
is no question of Imaginary 'I' in the innocent state of a small child.
The beginning of Imaginary 'I' comes when the growing child says,
instead of "Baby wants this", "I want this". This is the beginning of
Imaginary 'I'. A small child does not feel himself as Imaginary 'I'.
The formation of Imaginary 'I' comes later. We have to learn to speak
of ourselves in the third person. For example, in my case, I have to
come to the point in my internal development of consciousness, through
the work of separation, of saying: "Nicoll wants this", not "I want
it".
The formation of Imaginary 'I' belongs to a development which is
acquired. You know the Work says that we are all born amongst
sleeping people, also in a small sense we are all awake at birth. We are
born into a world of sleeping people who say 'I' all the time without
having the slightest realization of what they mean, so a small developing
creature begins after a time to imitate the sleeping people round him,
and at a certain moment says: "I wish this". Before that point, it is,
as it were, innocent, but once it begins to say: "I wish this," it has
become infected by the sleeping people by whom it is surrounded and
begins to think that it exists as 'I'. You must remember that the
development of Personality is that which is acquired by contact with
life in early days, so both False Personality and Imaginary 'I' begin to
take charge and from that point the growing person begins to have an
entirely false relationship to himself. Amongst all these things that are
acquired by imitation and example—in short, by the environment—are
first of all and most important of all Imaginary 'I' and False Personality.
The child begins to think that it has an 'I', a real permanent 'I'. Have
you ever noticed when a child begins to say 'I' for the first time? And
have you also noticed in what way it says 'I'? As far as I have observed
it is always imitative. The child begins to imitate one or the other
892
parent or the nurse or anyone who stands closely to him. But, as you
know, this is necessary because Personality with all its sins and faults
and wrong connections has to be made in an ordinary growing person
because this formation of Personality in general constitutes eventually
what we as adults in this Work have to work against and separate from
gradually.
As regards False Personality, it gives rise to very many wrong
emotional reactions. False Personality is based on pretence, especially
on imagining that you know something. The realization of our
ignorance of even what we know can begin to undermine the tremendous power of the False Personality. It is unnecessary for me to say that
False Personality always wishes rewards, medals, reputation, and all
the rest of it. It strives to get the better of other people. It is ambitious.
It tries to keep itself going at all costs—and all this is pretence. And
behind this pretence lies an enormous ignorance and helplessness which
I call the dark side of a person—i.e., the side he will not accept and will
not admit into consciousness. To be amongst people with very strong
False Personality is real torture for a man or a woman who has separated
to some extent from the domination of his or her False Personality.
When the False Personality is dominant it arouses all sorts of selfemotions in the Emotional Centre which can never lead to anything
real. Two giants, the Work says, walk in front of us, called Vanity and
Pride, and arrange everything for us in advance. This is the action of
the False Personality on us so that we cannot, while we are under that
domination, help leading false lives.
G. once said that the whole of the external world, all that is going
on now, all that you read in the papers, is maintenance of False
Personality—i.e., it is all a maintenance of what is unreal, invented.
False Personality dominates our emotional reactions more than anything else does. O. once said: "If you can manage to turn all emotions
arising from the False Personality against yourself, it will have a very
different effect." He added: "Find in yourself what you hate in others
and turn it round and begin to object to yourself and to hate yourself if
you can. You can only see yourself through turning your emotional
reactions round about and directing them towards yourself." Later on
he said: "Real work is on the Emotional Centre. All that this Work
teaches which must enter the Intellectual Centre first of all and be
registered there finally becomes concentrated on the state of your
Emotional Centre and its mechanical reactions."
When you do things from False Personality you are doing them
externally. In such a case there is nothing internal in you that
corresponds to what your False Personality is saying or doing. You are,
in other words, pretending, inventing, keeping up something which is
not you. Real Personality is different from False Personality because
a man may have acquired a perfectly good knowledge of how to make
something in which case he is more sincere. He has something real.
He may, for example, be able to paint very well. He has acquired this.
893
But he may pretend to paint much better than he does or, in other
words, he may pretend to a knowledge that he has not really got. All
Personality, whether false or real, belongs to the acquired side and this
acquired side must be built up as strongly as possible. That is why the
Work says you must have a good Personality and that is why G. once
said: "I can always talk to a man who knows something, such as a man
who can make good coffee."
Next let us speak about behaviour from False Personality. A typical
situation, constantly stressed in esoteric psychology, is always about
doing a thing externally, without any internal side in yourself corresponding to what you are doing. For example, you may affect outwardly
a belief that inwardly you are contemptuous of and despise. You
pretend to a belief in which you do not believe. This means that nothing
can grow in such a person's inner world. If the internal side—that is,
the more essential and real side—is negative to this external side that
manifests itself outwardly in life, if what he privately thinks wholly
contradicts what he publicly professes, and if at the same time he cannot
give up his external outward behaviour, a man is esoterically dead.
He is governed by his False Personality and its ambitions and cannot
give up this side and will never face himself internally, and in that case
he is incapable of any inner development. Psychologically, esoterically
or spiritually, this man is a living lie and he will never face the lie that
he is. There are so many parables and sayings about this in the Gospels
in connection with the Pharisees that it is unnecessary to say anything
further except that the Work teaches that personal work on oneself
depends entirely on inner sincerity with oneself. If False Personality
is very strong there cannot be any sincerity with oneself, and one's life,
although it may be a great success outwardly, is from the higher standpoint of esotericism a complete failure because there is nothing real
there, nothing genuine. For that reason we have in the practice of this
Work, which is based on self-study, through self-observation, to begin
to notice the action of False Personality which always creates for us
unreal life and takes away from Essence or our real side all possibilities
of growth and causes us to have a thousand and one cares and anxieties
which are quite unnecessary, which only make us more and more
unhappy and constantly involve us in situations and problems that have
no real existence. To be amongst people in whom the False Personality
is to some extent in abeyance is to be in an entirely new world. This
experience, which is possible for you all, while you are in it causes you
to wonder what on earth you have been doing all this time. And
certainly, to use the expression "what on earth you have been doing"
is correct because what you have been doing is in or on the "earth" of
yourself, the most outward, external side of you turned towards the
world.
Now the inner part of a man is his will and his understanding. If
the ideas of this Work no longer rest on the surface of yourself but begin
to penetrate, if you begin to see for yourself the truth that they conduct,
894
you move inwards towards the more internal side and so move away
from the False Personality with all its inventions, pretences and forms
of internal considering. When you realize that there is nothing that
you can condemn in another person that is not in yourself as well—in
fact, when you realize the meaning of the phrase: "Thou art the man"—
you move inwards, to a more real existence, and begin to see everything
in terms of a deeper meaning. Suppose we take moral arrogance or the
temptation of power. Have you ever observed these two factors in
yourself in connection with False Personality? You may think that you
have no moral arrogance, for example. That impression of truth which
leads, not to moral arrogance, but to the realization of the kind of
person you really are, will give rise to mercy and to a much wider range
of affection and quite possibly to a better state of bodily health. It is
the same as regards the increasing temptation of power which encourages False Personality, but this is not the truth, esoterically speaking,
although thousands have mistaken it for such and followed this path
which leads to so much deliberate and also unconscious cruelty, and I
mean by cruelty not only to others but to yourself, to the sides of you
which can grow. Do you think that following moral arrogance and the
love of petty domestic power will lead you to realization of your own
nothingness? Can you conceive that such a path will make Personality
more passive and enable all these unnourished, unwatered, real sides
of you that belong to the Essence to grow and so change your level of
Being? One of the teachings of this Work is to make Personality passive.
In order to do that you have to see and observe what keeps Personality
active in such a way that you always feel you are right. As long as
False Personality dominates Real Personality the latter will be under
the wrong leader and go in the wrong direction. False Personality
ascribes everything to itself. It is certain that it can do. It is just here
that moral arrogance and the temptation of power enter. But if the
more internal part of you begins to become conscious, begins to become
awakened through genuine self-observation sincerely done, you will
begin to avoid these very ordinary temptations and instead of feeling a
loss you will feel a gain. How difficult it is to talk to a person who,
without knowing it, is full of moral arrogance, who, without knowing it,
thanks God that he or she is not like other people. I have told you often
that the simplest psychological mechanism in us is to see evil or shortcomings in others and never to see them in ourselves. Here belongs the
great idea of the Work that we have to become far more conscious of
ourselves. The only path that leads in that direction is that of selfobservation which changes our whole idea of ourselves and so destroys
False Personality.
895
Quaremead, Ugley, May 18, 1946
COMMENTARY ON SELF-REMEMBERING
We are taught in this Work that we are not conscious and that we
do not remember ourselves. The Work says that the chief difficulty
confronting any higher stage of humanity or of oneself is due to the
absence of consciousness. We imagine we are fully conscious and that
everything we do and feel and think is a conscious process. However
the Work says that Man is asleep and that sleeping people can never
bring about a better state of affairs. Our level of Being is characterized
by this state of sleep which we are told first of all to study in ourselves.
This state of sleep which defines from one angle our level of Being
inevitably attracts the life belonging to that level of Being, the result of
which we can see in the world to-day. Were people even a little more
conscious the whole state of outer life would alter and what everyone
thinks should be done in the name of common sense could be done.
As you know, the emphasis in this Work is laid on this factor called
consciousness. This Work is not based on faith or hope or love directly
but on consciousness. Consciousness in the Work is called light. For
example, if I remain in my ordinary state of consciousness which is
really a state of sleep, my level of Being will attract what belongs to it.
On a small scale some people are a little more conscious and others a
little less. A man of low Being, a man without any trace of selfobservation, if he is in power, will attract all that belongs to his level
of Being.
To-night I wish to speak once more about Self-Remembering and
what the Work teaches in regard to how we can change our own level
of Being. You know that this Work teaches us to become more conscious
of ourselves and that this begins with a certain form of self-observation.
We are told to observe ourselves along certain lines which are quite
definite and which everyone should know. Now Self-Remembering is
an act which can be directed towards anything you like. A person may,
for example, always remember his or her own misery and keep it in
the forefront of themselves. The Work calls this negative Self-Remembering. This is not really a conscious act, as Self-Remembering must
become eventually, but it is a mechanical Self-Remembering. Take,
for instance, your different forms of internal accounts that you have
made in the past—that is, what you think other people owe you—all
the incidents in which you feel that you have not been given a proper
chance. If you keep all this in the forefront of yourself it is exactly an
example of negative Self-Remembering. Which self are you remembering in such a case—or which selves? You are remembering negative
selves or 'I's. That is, you do not really in the Work-sense remember
yourself, but you remember certain selves in you quite easily and these
selves are in the negative sides of centres. People feel that they are no
good. This is negative Self-Remembering and it leads nowhere. Real
896
Self-Remembering is to try to remember something that you are not,
if you will allow this paradox for the moment to pass without argument.
All real Self-Remembering begins with something to do with this Work.
For example, it is said that when you remember yourself, you must try
to remember your aim. Your aim must always be connected with
something that concerns the ideas of this Work and to form such an aim
you must already have had some considerable experience of selfobservation from different angles of the Work. When you make an aim
which is the definite result of self-observation, say, that you are always
negative in connection with something or other in the past or in the
present or both, then you can make a real Work-aim not to express this
negative emotion outwardly and eventually not to identify with it
internally in your Intellectual and Emotional Centres. This begins to
form what is called Deputy-Steward in yourself—i.e. you put some
'I's that begin to understand what this Work is about in charge of you
so that although you may constantly forget yourself—fall asleep—you
are reminded that something is wrong in regard to your inner state.
Eventually Steward will begin to appear. Steward is a much higher
level than Deputy-Steward and comes down from above as help for
you. Above Steward lies Real 'I'. If we could get in touch with
Real 'I' directly without having to pay all that is necessary for this
inner development, then we should be able to remember ourselves in
the Work-sense of that term. But we have to start from where we
are and gradually by a process of inner separation and selection
learn not to go with certain 'I's and give the preference to other
different 'I's which stand on a slightly higher level of our average
being. But negative Self-Remembering is one of our very great
difficulties and will stand in the way of any further inner growth.
It is very easy to feel that one is no good, that one understands nothing,
that one is not making any progress. It is very easy to yield to these
'I's that say "if only this", "if only that". All this is negative SelfRemembering and has to be separated from eventually. In fact, it is
sometimes very astonishing to realize that what we thought was our
genuine humility is nothing of the kind and that it is nothing but an
artifice arising from our False Personality—i.e., that it is a form of
vanity or self-pride.
You have heard that the only thing that we can sacrifice is our
suffering. What does sacrifice mean? Sacrifice means originally to make
holy. Does it mean that we have to make our suffering holy? No, its
meaning is far deeper. As long as I identify with my suffering, as long
as I ascribe it to myself, I will remain identified with it. Now whatever
was made holy originally meant that with which all personal connection
had been given up. It belonged then to God. If you like you can
substitute for the word "holy" the word "conscious". You cannot
become conscious of anything in yourself as long as you identify with it.
To become really conscious of anything in yourself is to be no longer
identified with it, no longer it. If I become conscious of my mechanical
897
forms of suffering and internal account-making and my negative states,
they are no longer me. I detach myself from them, I let them go, as
it were, I no longer feel myself by means of them. As a result, my
feeling of myself will change. This act allows transformation to work
and whatever is real in your suffering you will meet on a higher level
completely transformed into something else, but as long as you tie
yourself down to your suffering and really feel yourself through your
suffering—in fact, feel your own importance in this way—you cannot
expect any transformation. As I once said long ago, it is like standing
on a plank and trying to lift the plank. You have to step aside, and
then it is quite easy to lift it.
Whenever we remember ourselves in the mechanical sense by
remembering our miseries and suffering, we are like Lot's wife. Our
heads are turned round the wrong way and we look back into the past
and then we are nourished by all sorts of unhappy memories which are
engraved on rolls in negative parts of centres. We have to remember
that we are now in this Work. This at once is a real form of SelfRemembering. A negative person must learn through personal selfobservation not to remember his accounts and not to go with typical
small negative 'I's that lie around like sharp points in the ground which
only open old wounds. "We have," said G. on one occasion, "to learn
how to walk. In order to walk it is necessary to have good shoes." And
he added that he had leather to sell from which it was possible to make
good shoes but that everyone had to make his own shoes out of this
leather that G. had for sale. We must understand, of course, that he
was talking about walking in oneself and avoiding dangerous places.
Then we can walk in life without being upset and hurt by all the
changing events that come to us from every quarter.
Enough has been said to shew that Self-Remembering does not
mean always to remember your negative self. In this connection I will
give you one definition of external considering and its meaning. It was
said on one occasion at the early Groups that external considering
means to forget oneself and to think what the other wants, and it was
added that in this way two results will follow. The first is that one can
help, and the second is that one gets help. But if you really come to
think about the whole question you will see that all real Self-Remembering is simply forgetting yourself, your ordinary self, your ordinary
negative 'I's, your ordinary forms of internal considering, and all the
rest of it, and feeling certain that some further state of yourself exists
above all this personal uproar that takes place all day long in each one
of you, with which you keep on identifying, and when the Work says
that we have Real 'I' above us you must understand that this act, so
to speak, of separating from False Personality, deliberately at some
moment every day, is designed to make it possible for us to come in
contact with the first traces of Real 'I' which is already there and which
is our real goal.
898
Quaremead, Ugley, May 25, 1946
COMMENTARY ON IDENTIFYING
We are told in this Work that one of the things that we have to
observe in ourselves is identifying. It is said that identifying is the most
terrible force acting on this planet that keeps people asleep and so
prevents them from awakening. As we are—that is, as mechanical
people, who do everything mechanically and have not got any proper
consciousness—we identify at every moment. We identify with our
thoughts, with our feelings, and we identify with what happens in outer
life. In this way we are kept in prison without realizing it—and only
through the development of consciousness can we get out of this prison.
Only a few people wish to do so—namely, those people who have what
is called Magnetic Centre and therefore feel that there must be something different and seek to try to find it. All of us have what are called
unnecessary emotions, the source of which is identification. Our
Emotional Centre, which is the most important centre in us and is
capable eventually of connecting us with Higher Emotional Centre, is
in a very bad state. In the first place it is full of acquired negative
emotions which we have imitated from others. By birth our Emotional
Centre is free from negative emotions and by birth we are born in a
very small way awake. There is a kind of innocence in small children
which they lose very soon through identifying. This innocence, if we
can call it so, belongs to Essence, but soon it becomes surrounded by
Personality and False Personality, and we lose our original centre of
gravity which passes from Essence into Personality. We then become,
so to speak, invented people carrying on a fictitious life. You have only
to look back at some of the older magazines, say, of forty or fifty years
ago, to notice how artificial everyone looks in the illustrations or photographs and how unreal the romances and stories are. One wonders how
people could behave like that, dress like that, do things like that, and
yet we are in exactly the same state of hypnotism at every moment.
Now when you look at these older prints, these older stories, and wonder
how people could do things like that, you are really looking at the power
of identifying and the power that identification has over humanity.
And yet you think that you yourself are not identified at all. As you
know, humanity is kept asleep for certain reasons but it is always
possible for a certain number of people to awaken from this sleep which
comes partly through identifying. Each one of you is identified at this
moment. Each one of you has a hundred and one unnecessary emotions.
Each one of you is identified with a hundred and one unnecessary
thoughts. When a man is totally asleep he is identified with every
thought that comes to him automatically and every mood that arises
in him automatically, and every feeling. He takes all this as his life
and, in fact, more than this, he takes it as his necessary life. In the work
of self-observation we are told in what direction to observe ourselves
899
and the reason for this is to be able to separate ourselves very gradually
from all these unnecessary forms of identifying with transient thoughts,
moods and feelings. We then begin to have something that stands
behind us. We then begin to see ourselves, as it were, on the stage
in front of us. We begin to see all sorts of different 'I's in us, saying
this and thinking that, and behaving like that and holding forth like
that, as something unreal, something that is not oneself, something that
has nothing to do with Real 'I'. In other words, we begin to see our
mechanicalness. All this is a very great step to take and once a person
has taken it he or she can never be the same person again. But the power
of identifying is so tremendous that even although we may reach a state
when for a moment we are separated from our Personality, at the next
moment we fall down right into it—that is, when we have reached the
stage of having been able to "walk on the waters" for a moment, at the
next moment we sink. We are then once more in the small theatre of
our mechanical selves with its self-dramas.
The Work says that we must struggle every day with identifying and
that this struggle takes very many forms and directions. For example,
a man may, through self-observation, realize that he identifies with
someone or with some forms of thought or emotion, and may for a time
separate himself from that particular kind of identifying, but he will
find that he begins to identify with something else far more. At first
he accepts this and is quite certain that in this respect he is not identified.
Then he realizes what has happened. So the struggle must continue all
his life. Sometimes people say: "Surely we should identify, because
then we feel real, we feel real emotions, and so on." This is not correct.
You can feel no real emotions if you identify—in fact, the Work says
that as we are we know only one emotion or one taste—the taste of being
identified. As you know, we identify particularly with our negative
states, with our negative moods, and with our negative thoughts. The
Work speaks very little about positive emotions. At the same time, it
says that positive emotions are possible, but that they have no trace of
identifying, no taste of identification. They are not self-emotions, forms
of self-liking. All self-emotions are forms of identifying. Positive emotions
have no such taste and are not self-emotions. We cannot create them
at present unless we try to do this Work sincerely, unless especially we
try to follow the three lines of the Work. The first line is work on oneself,
which begins with sincere and uncritical self-observation according to
what we are taught by the Work to observe. The second line is work in
connection with one another, to understand one another and not to
react mechanically to the unpleasant manifestations of others in the
Work, to learn a common language and so externally consider them.
The third line is to help those teaching the Work and to assist in the
transmission of it. If these lines are followed, especially the first and
second, we may have as a reward flashes of positive emotion whose taste,
whose instantaneous quality, is utterly different from the ordinary heavy
emotions amongst which we live. What we might call our positive
900
emotions are not really positive emotions because they turn very easily
into their opposites—namely, into negative emotions. For example, you
are feeling very pleased with yourself, you are feeling fine, feeling good,
and all the rest of it, and someone says something to you of an unpleasant nature, and the next moment you are plunged into negative
emotion. Now the point about real positive emotions is that they never
have an opposite in them—that is, they can never turn into negative
emotions. They may come in a flash and then disappear, but they
cannot turn into any opposite thing, into a negative state. And also they
always make you see things that you never saw before, like a sudden
vision—that is to say, their cognitive value is very great. The next
moment you have dropped down to an ordinary level and you forget
what you saw and cannot record it and yet you know that you saw
something that you had never seen before, some aspect of truth, of
meaning.
Now if anybody has had in the past or does have in the future such
traces of positive emotion, he or she must register them as being of very
high value even although one cannot remember what exactly happens.
The most hopeless thing is to regard them as mere nonsense. Positive
emotions cannot reach us in the second state of consciousness, but they
can reach us in the third state of consciousness—i.e. Self-Remembering
or Self-Awareness. When a man is absorbed in his private interests, in
his self-emotions, in his vanity, in his self-complacency, in his moral
arrogance, in his feeling that he is always right, in his complaints, and
all the rest of it—that is, when a man is completely identified with
himself-—he can never receive a trace of positive emotion. That is why
it is so necessary to begin to work on oneself and to separate oneself from
oneself. When a man remembers himself, he is not identified—that is,
when a man reaches the third level of consciousness that exists in all
humanity and is really their birthright—he is in a state of consciousness
that can receive help from Higher Centres—namely, from Conscious
Humanity—but when a man is in the second state of consciousness he
is always in a constant state of identifying, identifying with money,
identifying with people, and identifying with ambition and identifying
with himself, and so he is asleep and under the Law of Accident. In
the second state of consciousness, the so-called waking state, nothing
from a higher level of being can reach us. So everything will go in the
only possible way it can go because everyone is then a machine and no
one can do.
901
Quaremead, Ugley, June 1, 1946
COMMENTARY ON MEMORY
People so often not only try to explain themselves by their past, but
feel themselves only by it. What do we mean by our past? What we
call our past may be only one explanation of our present and a very
inadequate one. What we call our past is our memory of it. But what we
call our memory does not explain either the past or the present. Our
memory is according to our level of Being. Our personal memory is so
often a false, distorted thing. The point is that we remember very little
—let us say, one hundred-millionth part of all that happened. I often
doubt if we ever can remember anything as it actually was. Our
memory depends on our powers of reception and is by no means
objective. Do you remember, for instance, all that happened outside
and inside you in the external world and in your mind even yesterday?
Or last week? Or last year? Of course you do not. You remember
scarcely anything of the sum-total. Please do not pretend you do. But
some pride themselves on having a very good faultless memory and even
say so. Another person remembers differently. So there is a quarrel
—a very tedious kind of quarrel. Now what memory we have connects
things in its own subjective way. But do you suppose that this thin,
subjective memory really connects things aright? Can you really see
your life through your memory? It is true to say that the past must
exist for the present moment to exist. But what is your present moment
that your past so often creates for you ? Is it a real one, or an invention
of the past? What is the thing you cling to called "memory of the
past"? I do not think it is reliable. Can you remember what you did
as well as the other person? You remember what he or she did. Is your
so-called memory anything you can really trust? From my own
experience in this Work I would say at once that it is the most unreliable
guide to follow and that one has practically to cancel it. Our memories
are private liars, that we carry about carefully. Do not think that to
remember yourself is to remember your past. To proceed into the future
with this false memory is not any solution to one's life. I would say,
rather, forget—overcome—your past. It is all so much nonsense to
imagine we have infallible memory. Oh, this memory that folk cling
to and hug in an ecstasy of unhappiness! The realization that what we
call our past—that is, what we believe that we remember as our past—
is not something to base our present moment on, is a step in awakening
—otherwise we continue to sit in a darkness of our own making, a
darkness made by our subjective ideas of our past, which we say is real
memory. We have no real, unchallengeable memory. Yet the Work
says we have a real memory, only it is not accessible to us at the ordinary
levels of consciousness. Everything is recorded. Everything we saw,
everything we did and said, everything we felt and thought, is there—
on rolls in centres and in their sub-divisions. But our access to this real
902
memory is, mercifully for us as we are, concealed from us. The action
of uncritical Observing 'I' begins to restore in a small part real memory
—but only to the extent that a person can stand it without going
completely mad. We have a system of buffers, to mention one factor,
that prevents us from being conscious in real interior memory. Real
interior memory is opened at death—it is called a "book" in the NewTestament. If your imagination of yourself, your false notions of yourself, your False Personality with its invented notions of what you are—if all this has, in this life, been to some extent separated from, not
identified with, and so seen through, then perhaps one might bear a
little this opening of the "book" which is described in Revelation in the
following words:
"And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before
the throne; and books were opened: and another book was opened,
which is the Book of Life: and the dead were judged out of the
things which were written in the books, according to their works."
(Revelation XX 12)
This means that at death we become conscious in the 4th Dimension
—that is, all the life becomes conscious to us—and then we see what
really happened. Why two books? Ah, that is indeed a question to
think about.
In that interesting Persian esoteric story called "The Conference of
the Birds" the same idea appears. The birds had at last, after losing all
their feathers, reached the presence of the Sovereign. "But", it is said,
"first of all a register was placed before them, in which every detail of
the deeds that each one of them had done or omitted to do, from the
beginning to the end, was carefully entered."
*
*
*
Let us speak about memory from what the Work teaches. Every
centre has its own memory and every part of a centre has its own
memory. The qualities of these memories are different. We have not,
in short, one memory, but first of all three memories, then nine memories,
and then twenty-seven memories. This is because, taking three centres,
Intellectual, Emotional and Instinct-Moving Centre, each has its own
memory. Then, dividing each of these three centres into three parts,
we have nine smaller memories. Again, each of these sub-divisions is
again divided into three—so that we have 3 + 9 + 27 memories—that is,
thirty-nine different sorts of memory on different scales. On these thirtynine memories everything we have seen, said, thought, felt, and sensed, is
recorded. But our access to these thirty-nine memories is very slight.
We live as a rule in one or two very small sub-divisions of centres. Let
me add that even this category of memories is incomplete. The negative
divisions of centres have been left out. If we divide the Intellectual and
Emotional Centres each by a cross-line into two parts, the lower part
being the negative side, then you can calculate for yourselves that we
have another twenty-four memories.
903
Now in speaking about different memories in us, let us take something that we can easily grasp. Intellectual memory is different from
emotional memory and again the memory of Moving Centre is different
from intellectual memory and emotional memory. We must conceive
very large things here, up which we crawl as small insects. A man may
have learnt to ride a bicycle. That is, his Moving Centre remembers.
But he cannot remember what he once knew of Chemistry. When he
gets on a bicycle he finds soon that he can ride it. Something remembers.
What remembers? His Intellectual Centre? Certainly not. He taps
another memory, more easily accessible to him. But he cannot remember some chemical formula. So he will have to look it up. Yet he finds
he takes it all in more quickly than a man who has never learnt
Chemistry. After a time "things come back to him" and his intellectual
memory revives—but only by some effort.
Now let us take Emotional Centre. A person remembers, as a rule,
unpleasant negative emotions. They revive themselves, by mechanical
associations, very easily. This kind of memory is not the same as the
memory of Intellectual Centre or Moving Centre. The Emotional
Centre is not under our control—that is, we cannot feel happy when we
are unhappy. There are certain efforts possible here—but I speak of
ourselves as ordinary people. An effort in connection with Intellectual
Centre can change the direction of thought and one can recall something
by concentration or by looking it up. But the memory of Emotional
Centre, which means so often the memory of the negative part of
Emotional Centre, is not altered so easily. One reason is because we
have such long strings of unpleasant memories harboured there, that
we take as real, as actual, and, in fact, as our past. When you think a
thing is real, is actual, naturally you cannot alter it. So it is difficult
to alter the memories belonging to the negative part of Emotional
Centre. But once we begin to doubt their truthfulness, once we begin
to suspect they are not wholly correct, then of course it is possible to
separate from them. This is a fortunate moment. One, so to speak,
discards the past as one imagined it to be, and steps right into the
present with a certain delight, freedom, an "I need not be like this."
One has always this feeling of delight when one gets free from one of
the many chains anchoring us to what we have hitherto insisted is
ourselves, and defended so uselessly with a useless expenditure of energy
that could go toward a new edition of oneself, a new view of oneself,
a new person. These chains, however, are very powerful. Only the
intake of the Work—only the breathing in of another set of influences
—can begin to dissolve them. For no one can free himself from what he
is unless he feels the existence of what is higher than he is and begins to
obey it. But people easily object to this idea—namely, that there is
anything higher than themselves. We are set very hard and tight in
ourselves. We cannot see that there is something higher in ourselves than
we are ourselves—namely, higher levels of consciousness, higher levels
of Being and Knowledge, higher levels of understanding and so of
904
mercy. This awareness of something higher is a critical point in a
person's movement towards internal awakening, and at this point everyone who has got as far as this has to undergo a long, difficult, and yet
quite simple and straightforward struggle to tilt the balance which
eventually makes the unforgiving Personality passive and merciful
Essence active.
What connection has all this with memory? It has a very real
connection, because unless a person begins to have a Work-memory and
can see himself over a period he can never approach this point. Unless
he has ceased to believe that he knows himself and is what he imagines
he is and behaves as he thinks, he cannot change. Why? Because he is
satisfied with his Imaginary 'I'. So he remains asleep, even if life knocks
him very hard. It is never his fault, of course. He does not see that his
level of Being—what he is—attracts his life. And he has no real memory
—no Work-memory gained by self-observation. He takes himself for
granted. The memory he has is not real memory but memory edited by
vanity and prejudice. I repeat that of all we have done and said, of all
we have seen and heard or of all that others have done to us or said to
us—of all we have thought or felt or intended or wished—of all our
behaviour and of all the behaviour of others to us—of all this we remember a hundred-millionth part and even so it is all wrongly connected.
But we have a deeper memory accessible only to a higher level of
consciousness, where it is all recorded as it actually was. The formation
of Work-memory through Observing 'I' begins to lift memory to
another level. Then perhaps, we will not eventually experience too
disastrously the shock of being confronted with what we did or said or
thought and what we imagined we did or said or thought.
Quaremead, Ugley, June 8, 1946
ON THINKING IN A NEW WAY
It is often said that this Work is to make us think in a new way but
this is impossible unless people exert themselves mentally—namely,
make mental efforts in connection with the ideas. Unless a person
thinks of the Work and ponders it and connects it with himself or herself,
the mind cannot be changed—that is, the person will continue to think
in exactly the same way as formerly. Unless we think about the ideas
of the Work and think about our behaviour and reflect as to whether
we think about ourselves in the way the Work teaches, we will remain
the same—that is, there will be no change of mind—no μετάνοια. That
is to say, the Work will not influence us—-nothing gets home to us.
Then the Work lies, as it were, like so many unopened parcels in the
Intellectual Centre. Now we have to seek and find for ourselves by what
905
means we can be influenced by the Work. As you know, ordinarily
people are influenced by life. The Work, as a system of ideas which
actually form an organic whole, is so constructed that if it is taken in,
if it is really united with, the whole mind begins to change, and as a
result everything can be changed in us. One of the ideas that struck
me emotionally from early in this Work was the idea that we are all
asleep and that all that one reads in the papers is about people behaving
in sleep and thinking that they can do in this state, but a still more
powerful idea began to influence me later—the idea that I myself was
asleep. Now ideas are more real than facts. You remember what O.
said about ideas? He said that modern psychology does not realize the
immense power of certain kinds of ideas and their realness. "Even in
primitive philosophy", he wrote, "when men divided ideas into divine
and human, they understood better the existence of different orders of
ideas. Modern thought does not recognize this at all. Existing psychology and the theory of knowledge do not teach people to discriminate
between different orders of ideas, nor point out that some ideas are very
dangerous and cannot be approached without long and careful preparation. This occurs because modern psychology does not take into
consideration the reality of ideas, does not understand this reality. . . .
Ancient and mediaeval psychology understood better the position of
the human mind in relation to ideas. It understood that the mind could
not deal with ideas in a right way so long as the reality of them was not
clear to it. And further the old psychology understood that the mind
was incapable of receiving ideas of different kinds simultaneously or out
of the right order—that is, it could not pass without preparation from
ideas of one order to ideas of another order." O. compares esoteric ideas
with complicated machines which it is impossible to use rightly unless
one is prepared beforehand.
Now in this Work we have certain ideas taught us whose object is
to transform our whole way of thinking. These ideas are given in small
quantities, so to speak, at a time. Let us take once more the idea that
Man is asleep. Now this idea is very dangerous unless it is taught
rightly. What is the preparation that begins to make it possible to
understand this idea rightly? The preparation consists in realizing
through self-observation that one is oneself asleep. This takes many
years of self-observation and mental exertion, many years of private
thought and private reflection and inner dialogue. When this preparation has reached a certain point, the vision of Man asleep—of the world
asleep—comes to a person in the right way. It no longer comes in a
negative form, or with a feeling of superiority, but as an actual perception without any negative emotion or personal identification connected
with it. In such a case we can say that one of the ideas of the Work
has begun to influence a person and change that person's whole mode
of thinking. But unless the Work has been pondered continually in the
most intimate part of one's own private thinking, this really cannot be
expected to take place. The person will only say in a parrot-like way
906
that Man is asleep, or even that he himself is asleep, without realizing
what it means. All the ideas of the Work convey great density of
meaning but without personal thought and application they are merely
so many signposts. A superficial knowledge of the Work helps no one,
yet at the same time a superficial formatory knowledge of the Work
is necessary as a first step. To understand an idea of the Work is quite
different from knowing about it. The difference between knowing and
understanding is incommensurable. It is quite possible to say to ourselves that in the affairs of ordinary life we are very rarely influenced
by the Work. We know something about it and occasionally perhaps
think about it for a very brief time, but the influences of life are far
more powerful, therefore it is necessary to find and seek by what means
the influences of the Work begin really to affect our lives and the way
we behave and think and feel and so on. That is why we have to try
to understand the Work and not merely to know it.
Now unless we have some kind of aim the Work cannot influence
our lives for then we are not surrounded by the Work, but remain open
to all the influences of life. We can compare aim in the Work with
something inside which we stand for the time being. If we remember
our aim in the midst of life we feel at once that two quite different
things are acting on us—namely, life, which will always make us behave
mechanically and this aim in which we are standing for the moment,
which prevents us from behaving entirely mechanically. This is giving
acknowledgement and so power to the Work. It may be only a transient
experience but yet it is a very genuine one, and although it may
eventually fail we at least get the taste for a moment of what it might
mean to stand within the influences of the Work, and so have a certain
power over the influences of life acting on our mechanical Personality.
This is why the Work emphasizes so much the necessity of having some
kind of aim. It may be even a short aim for a few moments, a few
hours, but that is better than nothing. Aim is on many scales.
Now to nourish one's aim one must ponder the Work and here
mental exertion is necessary. Aim can never become mechanical. Aim
must be something that is consciously kept going through new supplies
of thought and insight. It is just like building up a barrier near the sea.
The sea keeps coming in and washing away parts of this barrier which
have to be constantly renewed. It is quite true to say that as we are
we may not be able to do this for long, but yet I repeat that if we have
done it for a time sincerely we get a taste of what it might mean to
reach a stage where the influences of the Work are more powerful than
those of life. Let us take once more negative emotions. Here it is really
quite possible to do something. But you cannot do anything, even for
a short time, if you try to do it as a given task, as something that you
were told to do. You have to do it from some degree of individual
understanding why negative emotions are useless and harmful both to
you and to other people. You have to realize, as deeply as you can,
your slavery to negative emotions, and how much is said in the Work
907
about getting rid of this slavery and all the reasons why. For these
purposes you must collect in your mind many of the sayings of the
Work and behind all that you must have some general conception of
all that the Work teaches about inner development, about inner freedom. If you do this simply as a task, as something you have been told,
without any intimate private understanding of the reason, you will not
be able to resist life. The influences of the Work acting on you will be
too feeble. In other words, you will not have any real point in the
Work. Now if you make a temporary aim not to be negative towards
a particular person, not to consent to the mechanically-induced negative thoughts and feelings, not to go with them, not to listen to them
(and above all if you find the same irritating things in yourself) then
you will be standing in the Work—standing in the influences of the
Work—which then can reach you and begin to change you. This is
standing within your Work-aim. The influences of the Work, which
are different from the influences of life, can reach you. It is really quite
simple. Make a clear-cut definite Work-aim of this kind and try to
keep consciousness in it for a time. You will then see for yourself the
result. But as a rule people never will make a simple clear-cut Work-aim
of this kind. They merely worry or vaguely wonder what to do, not yet
having heard with the mind what the Work teaches so distinctly about
personal work on oneself and about what they must practise. I am
fairly certain that some will ask: "What does the Work teach us to do
as regards work on ourselves?" You have heard it with your ears over
and over again. Yes, but who has really heard it with the mind and
pondered it and exerted their minds over it, privately and intimately,
and realized in which direction the path goes and what it means to
begin to follow it? For the Work is a Way, a path—inner, quiet, stage
by stage, and psychological—that leads to a definite goal. Others who
gave us this Work have followed this 4th Way and seen for themselves
where it leads.
Quaremead, Ugley, June 15, 1946
A NOTE ON RELAXATION
A man fully awake has no False Personality. For us who are
studying how to awaken this means that the more awake we are the
less are we in False Personality. Or, to put it the other way round, the
more a person is in False Personality the more is that person asleep.
Now a person who is asleep in False Personality has no real existence.
There is no real person. A man must become quite open to himself
without deception. This is true relaxation. He must cease to hold
himself in certain beliefs about himself, poses, pictures, ideas of himself.
908
Anxiety and fear, which prevent us relaxing, subtly arise when a man
endeavours to maintain what is not really himself. He lives on one side
of himself at a time, and the rest is dark to him. He is not open to
himself. The False Personality, always pre-occupied with different
forms of internal considering, with questions of whether a good impression is being made and appearances kept up, causes a strain in Being.
It is as if a man kept on standing on his toes and did not understand
why he felt exhausted. All the time he is keeping something up which
is not himself—something imaginary—something which does not fit
him. And this happens with everyone. If we had no False Personality
all this anxiety and nervousness which all secretly feel about themselves, whether they admit it or not, would vanish. Not only would our
relationship to others change, but our relationship to ourselves. We
then would understand what it is to relax. One reason is that the False
Personality can only love itself. Self-love, which attributes everything
to itself, keeps us in anxiety for it is afraid of loss of esteem and position.
Now False Personality never admits anything. It is always right. If it
pretends to confess its sins, it does so out of vanity, as a pose, to shew off,
to gain merit and applause. This absurd thing composed of self-evident
lies and false imagination you might think easily seen and destroyed.
On the contrary its existence is most difficult to see and its strength is
extraordinary. It will neither allow itself to be found out nor allow
ourselves to find ourselves out—that is, what we really are. If it did,
its power would be destroyed, and we should be free from our greatest
enemy—that is, the person we imagine ourselves to be, whom we serve
as slaves from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment
we fall asleep at night. So we cannot deeply relax when we serve in
this way, for False Personality will keep on making us correspond to
what it imagines itself to be. It will not allow a person to be at rest,
but must prod him to act in the way he is supposed to act, to keep up
his reputation, his character-role. So if a man has a picture of himself
as being a hard worker the False Personality will drive him to work
hard even at the point of death. It makes each of you keep up your
pictures of yourself.
Now the strength of the False Personality depends upon buffers.
Its strength is not in its self-evident lies and false imagination but in the
buffers that lie like walls in centres and prevent us from seeing more
than one side at a time. So we do not see inner contradictions. They
prevent us from bringing two things together, both of which we know
separately. Because they have this curious action, lies and imagination
have the power to control us. The time comes when the Work finds us
out for ourselves. One way in which it does this is to make a contradiction in us conscious to us—that is, to make us simultaneously more
and more conscious of what lies on each side of a buffer. Ordinarily
we would be conscious only of what lies on one side and after a lapse
of time of what lies on the other, and so see no contradiction. So the
False Personality, through the action of buffers, prevents us from
909
meeting ourselves. It prevents a man from becoming quite open to
himself without deception. So it is necessary to practise self-observation
over a long period until its memory, which records both sides of a buffer,
is strong enough to influence us. This makes it quieter. There is such
a noise going on inside us due to False Personality—so many 'I's shouting. So we cannot relax.
Quaremead, Ugley, June 22, 1946
WORK ON THE EMOTIONAL CENTRE
At the London Meeting this week at which all Groups were present
the teaching of the Work was begun afresh and one of the main ideas
stressed at the beginning was that this system of teaching is based on the
idea that Man was created specially as an experiment in self-evolution.
The Work says that Man was created a self-developing organism as
distinct from the animals. From this point of view Man is incomplete
like a building not yet finished and it is left to him to finish his own
building, to complete himself. For this reason certain teachings have
always existed in the world which can be called "esoteric teachings".
For example, this teaching that we are studying is sometimes called
esoteric Christianity. This has nothing to do with exoteric Christianity.
At this Meeting the three centres of Man were touched upon and
it was said that the Emotional Centre in Man is in a very bad state.
Let us make some brief commentaries on this point that this teaching
emphasizes so much. The Work says that we must work on our Emotional
Centre and purify it, clean it out, get rid of unnecessary emotions that
keep us asleep and keep us slaves to external life. Let us take a person
who is always cross, always frowning, always bothered, always difficult,
in fact, always a nuisance. In such a person the Emotional Centre is not
working aright and it is necessary for such a person, through long trained
technical observation, to become aware that this wrong working of the
Emotional Centre exists in him or her. Now a person who is always
cross, cantankerous, difficult, quarrelsome, and even venomous, has in
this Work to realize that such a state of the Emotional Centre is quite
incompatible with any self-development—that is, this person, whether
a man or a woman, has to realize that to complete themselves in the
sense of this teaching, to evolve, to develop, is quite impossible as long
as the Emotional Centre in him or her remains in this mechanical state.
The point is that such persons are quite unaware of the state of the
Emotional Centre in themselves. They do not see that they are cross,
difficult, fault-finding, unpleasant, angry, and so on. On the contrary,
they have a picture of themselves as being very sweet and charming.
Therefore a gap exists in them, a gap in their consciousness of themselves. This gap can only be filled in by sincere and conscious self910
observation carried out according to the instructions given in this
teaching for self-observation. People all think they know themselves,
but no one does. This is an illusion. Usually other people know more
about ourselves than we do, but they, on the other hand, do not know
themselves. So it is a very good thing to begin to observe the state of
your Emotional Centre and the unpleasant manifestations that come
from it mechanically. The Work teaches that the Emotional Centre is
the most wonderful centre in us but that at present, in the state of sleep
in which we all exist, it is inundated with negative emotions, with selfpity, with self-emotions, with self-esteem, and a hundred and one other
similar forms of emotion that prevent us from really making contact
with one another and so prevent us from understanding one another's
difficulties.
Work on the Intellectual Centre is different from work on the
Emotional Centre, but the Work begins with observation of the three
main centres in us and we have to come to the point in which we realize
through self-observation the state of two centres—i.e., what goes on all
the time in the Intellectual Centre and what goes on all the time in the
Emotional Centre. Here you have a man who always dislikes everyone,
who jeers at people, who finds fault with people, and so on. Such a man
does not know that this is the state of his Emotional Centre. Or a man
feels himself always through superiority to other people but yet does not
realize it. The emotional feeling of superiority is always based on selfesteem, on self-love, on self-feeling. In such a case the Emotional Centre
does not work as it should, nor can it fill a person with the right feelings
that give him inner meaning and so peace. So it is a good thing to
observe the state of one's Emotional Centre, to observe it in action—i.e.
to observe how it mechanically reacts to external events and particularly
other people. Here lies a great task, which is really a life-task. This
Work is for all one's life and through applying it we gradually undergo
a transformation internally owing to the fact that we become more and
more conscious of our real sides, and what we really are. This destroys
illusions about ourselves.
When a man begins really to work on himself, when he has begun
to see the depth of this teaching, he can no longer remain the same kind
of man, a woman cannot remain the same kind of woman. He or she
then begins to understand what it means that people are born on this
Earth as self-developing organisms, and that there is a special task for
everyone that has to be followed and worked out in order to attain this
completion, this final development that is their real meaning for being
on this very imperfect planet. Each one's task is different, but once the
Work is understood in its broad outlines and once the truth of it is
acknowledged internally, each one is shewn what it is necessary to work
at. You must remember that the Work teaches that negative emotions
are unnecessary, that they complicate life continually, that they produce
all the unhappiness that exists in people's relationships to one another,
and that it also teaches that it is possible gradually to free oneself from
9"
these unnecessary negative emotions. Once a person knows this and
understands it and sees this inner truth he has already in his mind a
secret of incalculable value. He need never be at a loss, whatever his
circumstances, for he will always know what he has to do in any
situation—that is, not to express negative emotions, and then, to separate
from them, and finally not to have them at all. This Work does not
teach that we have no right to have negative emotions, because that
would be too difficult. It teaches that we have a right not to have
negative emotions. All our troubles, domestic tragedies and so on, are
mainly due to nourishing negative emotions, to feeling that we are owed
something. I ask you—what do you think you are owed? Examine it
—and then look at yourself. When you see what you are like, can you
really think you are owed anything? I would say, No, I realize that,
on the contrary, I owe to others. A phrase in the Lord's Prayer says:
"Cancel what we owe to God, as we cancel what we think others owe
us". That is, as long as your life is based on imagining that others owe
to you, you will get nowhere. But as more and more you see that no one
owes you anything and that it is always your own fault—then your
accounts, spiritually, are cancelled. This gives the possibility of hearing
higher centres and what they will tell you. But if you are a mass of
internal considering, of self-pity, of feeling you have never had a chance,
of feeling that your typical life-situation is exceptional, and that no one
understands your peculiar difficulties—then you will continue to
inundate the Emotional Centre with negative emotions. In that case
it cannot perform its true functions and so cannot give you inner
meaning and peace.
Quaremead, Ugley, June 29, 1946
NOTE ON SELF-REMEMBERING
The Work teaches that Self-Remembering immediately means better
food for all the cells in the body. On the contrary, identifying in all one's
life troubles, being negative, heavy, jealous, unhappy, and so on, which
signifies an absence of Self-Remembering, means bad food for all the
cells in the body. An act of Self-Remembering, in the midst of the uproar
of life, gives new force. The whole body feels lighter, because then the
cells composing the body receive new food—a class of food above
vitamins. The body needs right food from the psychology. The relationship of the body to the state of oneself, that is, one's psychological
state, is very intimate. A depressing negative state, a worrying state,
an anxious state, produces bad food for the body. The Work teaches
that the relation between the body and the mind is very fine, subtle and
definite. Bad states of the mind, and especially bad emotions—such as
small petty self-emotions, disliking, boredom, etc.—retard the right
912
work of cells in the body. So the Work teaches that this effort to work
on oneself, to pick up one's behaviour at any moment and transform it
by an act of Self-Remembering changes the chemistry of the cells in the
body. Man can be asleep in life although very busy. Man can be awake
in life although very busy. The results are quite different. If a man
begins to study what Self-Remembering means from realizing he does
not remember himself but is simply a machine reacting to outside
conditions always in the same way, he begins to see what the Work is
about. If he flatters himself as being all right as he is, the Work remains
shut to him. This means, internally, the active higher parts of ordinary
centres in him remain shut to him. So he lives, on the whole, in the
basement of himself, of his house. A man, a woman, should learn after
a time what it means to work on themselves and not to remain just a
function of external conditions—that is, upset, bored, unhappy, when
external conditions are not agreeable to them, and excited and enthusiastic when external conditions are favourable. This is to live in the
opposites. Then one is certainly a helpless machine changing from
misery to happiness and from happiness to misery. One does nothing to
create one's own life, to create, in short, oneself. Life then drives us as
a great belt drives hundreds of little machines. This is not a desirable
state, for then there is nobody—one is really nobody, with no power of
transforming any situation. One spends all one's money and then has
nothing, so to speak. There is no reserve of force. Nothing is created
in oneself. In this case one is identified with all that happens. In other
words, one does not remember oneself. If a man, a woman, in some
typical unhappy event of which there are many typical stereotyped ones
already made—if they identify fully with them they lose force. They are
machines, mechanically reacting to these typical stereotyped events, all
prepared for them like the jumps on a racecourse. Yes, it is really like
that. You come to a typical jump and fall. But if you remember yourself you need not—especially if you can say to yourself: "This is a typical
situation that millions of others are in at this moment". That deprives
it of its unique taste.
Now to repeat—"The Work teaches that Self-Remembering immediately means better food for all the cells of the body". But let me
remind you that Self-Remembering depends finally on the sense of something higher in yourself. When a man begins to apply the teaching
of this Work practically to himself he begins, as it were, to fly a little
above the surface of the earth. What he used to stumble at he no
longer stumbles at. In other words, he is living on a higher telegraph
wire—on a slightly higher level. What would have been a catastrophe
is now perhaps only a momentary incident. I ask you all to think
and reflect upon what it can possibly mean "to remember oneself"
in the midst of troubles and anxieties and, in short, in the midst of the
uproar of life's stereotyped daily incidents, daily events. In that way,
to vary the image, one begins to see what it might mean to "walk on
the sea" of oneself—in my case to walk on, and so above, Nicoll.
913
Quaremead, Ugley, July 6, 1946
COMMENTARY ON FALSE PERSONALITY
AND SELF-LOVE
Questions are asked at different times in which the term "self-love"
is used. I have explained that this term "self-love" is not used in this
system of teaching and when I use it myself I have usually added that
it is not a technical Work expression. In the early days of the Work in
London we often discussed among ourselves why this word was not
used and I remember someone saying that perhaps it was because it
was either a worn out word or it did not contain any clear meaning.
On one occasion, at a private talk among a few of us, Mr. Ouspensky
said that if we could find another term for it, it might be of some use
to describe False Personality. Various words were suggested such as
"self-esteem", "self-admiration", "self-importance", and others, but
when the term "self-liking" was suggested, he said that perhaps it came
nearest to what he had in mind. He added that the whole question lay
in the emotional reactions of False Personality in a man or woman.
He said man, or woman, must be shaken to their depths to get rid of
False Personality. We are easily offended and upset because False
Personality is our feeling of ourselves and it is an imaginary thing, an
acquired artificial mask, a pretended person that we like to imagine
ourselves to be and are not. This False Personality takes itself as a unity
and this is how Imaginary 'I' arises; it borrows, so to speak, the idea
that it is a real person and so says 'I'. The keeping up of the False
Personality takes a great deal of force. It makes us internally consider:
it exhausts us. Mr. Ouspensky said that the False Personality
always justifies itself in order to maintain its existence. This wastes
force. In regard to the False Personality, which in my case is called
Nicoll, he said that one has to be able to see that it is not really 'V.
He said it was composed of a certain grouping of rolls in centres and
groups of 'I's which may shift from time to time in regard to their
composition according to the environment in which one happens to be,
and yet at the same time it always has the same quality of falseness, of
something kept up—some invention. A man, for example, may amongst
lower class people assume a certain pretence of himself and amongst
higher class people assume another pretence of himself, and yet at the
same time it is all the same thing—that is, it is False Personality. He
said that we have to come to the point of being able to say to ourselves
internally "this is not really I". He said that this inner separation—in
my case from Nicoll—was the most important point in the Work, and
was connected with making the Personality as a whole passive. He said
that the study of False Personality was almost a life task and eventually
could only be understood through the development of inner taste which
led into Real Conscience. He said that Real Conscience apart from
Acquired Conscience was one of our greatest internal senses, and that
914
unless it had been given us, no one could awaken. Acquired Conscience
is, of course, merely a matter of how we have been brought up and what
we have been taught is right or wrong. He said that Acquired Conscience
is different in every nation. It could be anything. It was a matter of
imitation. Some people are taught by imitation and education that it
is right to have many wives and others are taught that it is right to have
one wife, and so on, in a thousand different ways, but Real Conscience is the same in all people, but it is buried beneath the surface of
the False Personality. He said further that no one of course could ever
act without some admixture of self—that is, in the sense of self-interest—
but that usually it was all self-interest. People did not externally
consider. He said that we are told to love our neighbours as ourselves
and that one meaning is that we could not do things completely without
self-interest or self-liking, but that half of it should be self and half love
of neighbour.
I asked him to speak about the stages of emotional development—
that is, the development of the Emotional Centre to its highest receptive
powers—as it was formulated in the Gospels—namely, "love of oneself,
love of one's neighbour, and love of God". It is recorded that Christ,
when he was asked by one of the Pharisees which was the great commandment replied: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself".
(Matt. XXII 37.) It is only possible to attempt to give a summary of what
Mr. O.'s answer was. He began by saying: "False Personality loves
itself only and all that flatters it or agrees with it. Unless a man can
find something to love greater than himself he can never modify this
inner state. Nowadays," he said, "people have got a very strange view
of the Universe and take it all for granted as if it created itself and see
nothing marvellous in it. How can a thing create itself? Scientists
ascribe every discovery to themselves, not understanding that they are
studying a Universe already given them which existed long before they
were born. They even call stars by their own names. It is absurd. But
False Personality ascribes everything to itself. In more ancient times
when a man had sense of the miraculous and worshipped God as the
Creator, both of himself and of the Universe, he was emotionally in a
far better state than exists nowadays in the average human outlook.
His understanding was better. He could stand under himself. In regard
to what is said in the Gospels about love, you must realize that this is
said in a very big sense, on a very big scale, and has meaning within
meaning in it. These meanings destroy False Personality because when
they begin to be understood by a man or a woman then the sense of the
smallness of themselves in comparison with the great mystery of Creation
begins to affect them emotionally. All greater emotions destroy the
small self-emotions which arise from the narrow contracted sphere of
the False Personality and its own minute self-liking and self-importance". He said, in so many words: "You know already that all sayings
and parables in the Gospels contain immense density of meaning which
reveals itself as we change in level of Being. To argue about whether
915
Christ existed or not as an historical fact has little sense. In fact He did,
and carried out his role deliberately. The point is that any man with
any kind of discrimination and understanding who reads the Gospels
for the first time knows at once that these brief records, these words, are
completely different from anything that has ever been written since that
time. But people read the Gospels mechanically; they do not understand what they read. They read about the Pharisees and Christ's
continual condemnation of them, but they do not see that it applies to
themselves—to their own False Personality. The Pharisee in you is
your False Personality; it is always pretending to be what it is not. It
is the Pharisee living in you. People even think sometimes that it is
easy to understand that one must love God with all one's heart, with
all one's soul, and with all one's mind, and imagine they do. They do
not understand that this means first making Personality passive—a long
task. They must give up completely the idea that they are their own
creators, realize practically, by blow after blow, that something
infinitely greater than themselves exists and that they are nothing. The
trouble is that they think they understand what Christ said, and even
quite religious people profess that they love God and do not observe
that they insist on their own opinions and are a mass of False Personality
so that really in the long run they love themselves". He added:
"For example, they are liable to judge and condemn everyone who
behaves in a way they do not like. That is, they hate in secret. Now
what does "love of neighbour" mean? Who is one's neighbour? Some
people perhaps think it means the person who happens to live next
door. Psychologically it has to do with those nearest you in Being,
those near you in understanding, in what they seek, or who are going
along the same road. That is why we must make a conscious relation
to those in the Work—the second line of work. And then what does love
of self mean? Which self? We have many selves. And finally, how can
we understand what "love of God" means? It is something tremendous,
something we may imagine we know about, but cannot know yet. Yes,
people say they love God and then go and kill one another or hate each
other, or talk evilly. How can that be love of God? Perhaps No. 7 man
knows what "love of God" means—that is, a man belonging to the
highest development possible to Man—certainly ordinary mechanical
Man cannot know what it means. He may love his own opinion of God,
the God he supposes he worships, but that is subjective, and if someone
disagrees with him, he will be angry and even persecute him and wish
to kill him. A state of objective consciousness (i.e., the fourth state of
consciousness) would have to be reached before the meaning of Christ's
words became fully understandable. All we can say of ourselves is that
we do not know how to love others or God. That is the first thing. We
must see that it is so. What we call love can turn to dislike, suspicion,
jealousy or hate in a moment. Love means positive emotion and we
do not know positive emotions. Their characteristic is that they never
turn into opposites because they include all opposites. We only know
916
emotions that turn readily into their opposites, and do so often in a
flash. We call it love but it is not love. It is self-love. The term love
is used in the Gospels in a special way. It is conscious love, conscious
relation, not mechanical love, that is meant. That is clear enough.
When a man begins to realize he cannot love as he is, then at least he
is nearer truth. He is no longer a fool. He has at least got rid of some
imagination, some part of False Personality, got rid of some make-up,
and so is nearer the possibility of conscious love. What passes as love
in mechanical life is chiefly imagination. What people call love is
usually satisfied self-love. To love is to work. Love is work."
Some people, of course, disagreed with these words and were sure
they knew what love was even though they were unhappy or sad in
appearance, I noticed. At another time Mr. O. said that we could not
form any conception of a "development of love" without a development
of consciousness. He said: "This Work speaks mainly of a possible
development of consciousness in Man; as Man is he is not yet properly
conscious. Love must become conscious, not passion. Man is asleep.
Everything in him is mixed with dreams, with imagination, and with
negative emotions, to which he clings most of all. Most of his life takes
place in his imagination. He is subjective and especially governed by
False Personality—this false person he has to obey which is not himself.
He cannot see anything as it is. But a man who reaches the highest state
of consciousness is in a quite different state. While in that state he
sees what everything really is. He is no longer in personal subjective
meanings. He is objective and so universal. He can include all things
in himself. This happens when a man becomes conscious in the highest
or most real part of him—that is, in "Real I" in him. Such a man
would understand what love of God is. But a man living in False
Personality in which only small one-sided self-emotions occur, cannot
do so. How could such a man, so prejudiced, so small-souled, so selfish,
so negative, understand what love of God is—a man who even looks
down on others if they do not belong to the same club, and utterly
rejects a man of a different religion or nation?"
917
Quaremead, Ugley, July 20, 1946
INNER SEPARATION
The technique of inner separation must be developed by practice.
At first it can be said that a person has no power of inner separation
simply because he has no idea that it is possible and says 'I' to everything. Nor has he an inkling that only along this path—this path of
inner separation—can he reach a higher level of himself—a new sense
of 'I'. An ordinary person is in a state of sleep. This is emphasized
by
the Work over and over again. People hear this said, but cannot see
in what way it affects them. When the Work says an ordinary person
is asleep it means that such a person takes himself not only as a conscious
person, as a person who behaves consciously and knows what he is
saying or doing, but also takes himself as one—that is, as a full-grown
person, a solid 'I'. He uses 'I' in all he says or does as if he were doing it.
In other words, he ascribes everything to himself. He ascribes his
feelings, moods, thoughts, sensations, and his speech, behaviour and
actions to himself, and even his digestion. This is what the Work means
when it says that such a person is asleep. He is asleep because he
ascribes everything to himself, and has no sense of anything higher than
himself or higher in himself.
The first step in redemption from sleep is to begin to realize through
uncritical self-observation that thoughts come to a man, feelings and
moods come to him, sensations come to him with all their resulting actions
and that in this respect he is a machine—a machine in whose complex
machinery he participates wrongly at every moment, saying 'I', 'I', 'I'.
By saying 'I' in this way, he ascribes everything to himself. The realization that one is a machine is underlined in this teaching as the first step
towards inner freedom and individual evolution. As long as a man or
woman—that is, this man-machine or woman-machine that everyone,
man or woman, ordinarily is—ascribes every psychic process, every
thought, mood, action, and so on, to himself, he cannot advance one
single step. He is fixed in his illusions. He then serves Nature—that is,
the cosmic influences that use mankind for their own reasons, without
pity, as we see so clearly to-day. The sin of Man is, so to speak, to miss
the mark, to identify with himself. In the allegory in Genesis, Man ate
of the Tree of Knowledge and thenceforward thought he knew what was
right and wrong. That is, he began to ascribe everything to himself.
(I will add here how extraordinary it is that the early chapters of
Genesis are regarded as literal and not psychological. The attack of
Science on Religion in the last century was based on the early chapters
of Genesis, which were taken as literal—that is, there was an actual
Tree, an actual seven days of creation, etc.)
Now this ascribing of everything to oneself, which is identification
in its deepest form, leads a person to the idea that everything is due to
him or her. Inner separation leads to an entirely different state—a
918
new idea of oneself. As we are all so heavily engaged in ascribing
everything to ourselves and so identify with every mood, thought,
feeling and so on, that happens in us, we must continually be reminded
by this Work that this ordinary everyday state of ourselves is utterly
wrong. It is totally wrong from top to bottom. It is a state of total sleep
—and from this state of total sleep, through self-identifying, the Work
endeavours to rouse us. This arousing is the beginning of awakening.
You have no thoughts of your own—although you ascribe them to yourself. Your thoughts come to you. You have no feelings of your own.
Your feelings arise mechanically according to circumstances and your
typical machinery of reaction. For example, you sob and sigh
mechanically. It is not you sobbing and sighing—it sobs and sighs. It
is the particular sort of machine that you have acquired that causes
these sobs and sighs. You identify with this acquired machinery and weep
and wail just because this is how your particular machine reacts. But
you think it is you—that is, 'I'—sobbing and sighing. This is not the
case. It is your machinery sobbing and sighing to which you say 'I'.
Another kind of machine acquired under quite different conditions in
another country would not sob and sigh when you do, but sob and sigh
under quite different circumstances that you might marvel at and
consider a joke. But if there is no conception, no insight into oneself,
then of course you will continue to take your mechanical reactions as
you—as 'I'—and so ascribe them to yourself. How, then, can you ever
awaken to a new edition, a new form, of yourself? It is obviously
impossible. You will remain at the level of Being that you are at. But
this Work is to raise Being. Have any of you thought enough yet as
to what a step in level of Being might be? What do you see in yourselves
by self-observation that is weak, lazy, self-pitiful, mean, narrow, prejudiced, ignorant, stupid, foolish, insincere, negative, jealous, revengeful, hurtful, suspicious, crooked, deceitful, inadequate, and a hundred
and one other similar things that belong to lower levels of Being? Now
suppose uncritical and sincere self-observation carried out with a sufficient
and gradual passion begins to awaken an increasing dislike of what
one is at present—I say, supposing that you begin to see that some of
these things are in you and that "Thou art the Man"—how can one
deal with them? Only by inner separation—that is, by not ascribing
them to oneself. This sounds very strange and yet here lies one of the
mysteries of the Work. As long as you ascribe anything to yourself you
are identified with it and therefore say 'I' to it. Now 'I' in this sense
cannot fight with 'I'. They are identical. For this reason, if a person
begins to observe what is weak or lazy or self-pitiful and so on, and to
realize that such things exist in him and ascribes them to himself, he will not
be able to change. What you say 'I' to can never change. Only by
inner separation can anything change in a man. If he observes meanness in himself or self-pity and can say rightly: "This is not I", then will
that man, that woman, not be under the power of meanness or self-pity.
For a moment he is free.
919
In regard to all this, an increasingly delicate inner perception is
required. At first everything is rough and violent. The formatory part
which says: "Either this is true or it is not" is useless. In-between-theopposites-thinking has to be slowly heard by the mind—that is, relative
thinking. Sometimes a thing is wrong, sometimes it is right. People
want a definite answer and so they are given stony commandments.
They are written on tablets of stone: "Thou shalt not", etc. This
form of truth is external and not yet flexible—not yet "water". But
people who pride themselves on their downright common sense cling to
the mental activity of the Formatory Centre—that is, the mechanical
side of the Intellectual Centre which can only think in terms of the
opposites—that is, the pendulum—and has no Third Force. They wish
to know always: "Is this right or is it wrong? All I ask is a plain,
definite answer." But truth as "water" is not like this.
Now I return to this mystery of not ascribing our thoughts, moods,
etc., to ourselves and therefore saying always 'I' to them. One has to
be able to say: "This is not TV' Take thoughts. A thought comes to
you. You say 'I' to it. So you enter it and then it has power over you.
But you need not do so. When Christ said that what enters a man does
not defile him, this was meant. For example, negative thoughts enter
us continually. If you have no enclosure, nothing sealed off in yourself,
they simply invade you and you are helpless in their power and so
you will act from them and express them in gesture, behaviour or
speech or action. This comes out of you. Then you are to be blamed.
This is a fault in you, arising from lack of inner separation. Then you are
a machine, chiefly driven by negative thoughts and feelings. But if you
have a Work-place in yourself, and sacred to yourself, and stand in it
at least three times a day, you separate from these unpleasant or evil
thoughts or moods—which are not you and nothing of them comes out
from you. This is the beginning of creating something new in yourself
—namely, the Work.
From what has been said it is now possible to disentangle and
understand the psychological meaning of Christ's words, which referred
apparently to literal food, ritually prohibited, but which really meant
psychological food—thoughts, moods, and so on. A man may have evil
thoughts that enter him but separates from them. He is guiltless. He
cannot stop evil thoughts entering him. But they do not defile him.
He can separate from them and not consent, not say 'I' to them.
Christ said:
"Hear me all of you, and understand: there is nothing from
without the man, that going into him can defile him: but the
things which proceed out of the man are those that defile the man.
And when he was entered into the house from the multitude, his
disciples asked of him the parable. And he saith unto them, Are
ye so without understanding also? Perceive ye not, that whatsoever
from without goeth into the man, it cannot defile him; because it
goeth not into his heart, but into his belly, and goeth out into the
920
draught? This he said, making all meats clean. And he said,
That which proceedeth out of the man that defileth the man.
For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed,
fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, an evil eye,
railing, pride, foolishness: all these evil things proceed from within,
and defile the man."
(Mark VII 14-23.)
When you identify with an evil thought, you act from it. It enters
you—and then comes out of you. The entry does not defile—but the
act coming from it does. People are often disturbed by their thoughts.
Their thoughts enter them from without. They think they are their
thoughts—that they made them. This is wrong. The thoughts come to
them. No one can think from himself. But people say they do. This is
wrong. Thoughts come. Any kind of thought can enter you. Some
thoughts are useful and need not be separated from. Thoughts fly into
us from every quarter, as countless birds into a wide-open cage, and
pass on. But they are not our thoughts. But you can make them all
your own by saying 'I'—if you ascribe them to yourself. You think
"I thought this." When you think you think from yourself, will from
yourself, and imagine you did all you have done from yourself and do
not realize it is all mechanical—that is, when you ascribe everything of
your life to yourself—you are asleep. You are asleep in life and asleep
in
yourself. When you perceive your thoughts come to you and that you
can identify or not with them, and when you also perceive you have no
real Will, but only the resultant of desires of many shifting 'I's in
conflict—then you begin to waken from sleep. You lose the life-idea of
yourself. This picture of yourself falls away like a skin and something
else begins to emerge, different from what you thought you were. You
become aware of a whole set of new meanings. This is the beginning of
psycho-transformism.
Quaremead, Ugley, July 27, 1946
ON LIVING MORE CONSCIOUSLY
It was once said that the fundamental cause of almost all the
misunderstandings arising in the inner world of Man, as well as in the
common life of people, is chiefly due to a psychological factor found in
Man's Being at an early age and due to a wrong education, the
stimulation of which gives birth in him to impulses of "Vanity" and
"Self-Conceit". In this connection it was emphasized in the most solemn
way that the happiness of Man, which depends on his reaching the
3rd State of consciousness—that is, the State of Self-Remembering or
Self-Consciousness—which should be in the real man and the real
woman—depends in the great majority of cases exclusively on the
absence in us of the feelings of Vanity and Self-Conceit. We can
921
recognize at once that the False Personality was being spoken of and we
see also that the activity of the False Personality ceases in the 3rd State
of Consciousness towards which we all strive to awaken by our work
on ourselves and our work in connection with one another. Sometimes
we attain states in which the False Personality is entirely shut out and
we have a kind of illumination and happiness that is entirely unknown
to us in the ordinary states of Consciousness in which we pass most of
our existence. All sense of worry disappears as well as all the usual
feelings of 'I'. All forms of jealousy, all forms of internal considering
vanish. One is alone with oneself and tastes a new kind of Consciousness
which is little short of a state of bliss. From time to time it is necessary
for us to review what we are doing and what is the great idea lying
behind the Work itself. We are taught that the 3rd State of Consciousness is our right by birth but we lose it and fall down into the 2nd State
of Consciousness or so-called waking state which is very much like
falling down from heaven to hell. In this 2nd State we are attacked on
all sides by evil 'I's, by evil moods, by every variety of unhappy inner
states from which only a sincere act of Self-Remembering can separate
us. Instead of doing it we identify with everything that can assail us
in the 2nd State of Consciousness—that is, the state of sleep in which
all humanity lives and which, as if in sarcasm, is called full consciousness. When we view the Work in this light we see it has a supreme and
clear aim and that everything said in the Work refers to attaining, to
realizing, this aim. But how many of us in the daytime practise inner
separation in a practical way in the recurring daily situations of life?
Is it not true that most of us spend our time in states governed by the
False Personality, to which we cling? So it is a good thing to remind
ourselves that in the 3rd State of Consciousness the False Personality
loses all its power over us and that we pass into an entirely new field
of inner and outer experiences. As a rule we live in the wrong parts of
centres but we have to realize as a personal fact that this is the case.
Small 'I's take hold of us. We identify with them and exaggerate their
importance and so we are kept in a state of sleep. Now you will find,
if you observe yourself, that a great many of these small 'I's are linked
closely with the False Personality—namely, with Vanity and SelfConceit. Therefore we do not get a right feeling of 'I' and how can
a man live rightly if all the time he is governed by a wrong feeling of 'I'
—namely, by Imaginary 'I', which is born out of Vanity and SelfConceit? Have you noticed how it goes in your own case? Have you
ever noticed in other people how much they are impelled to do to keep
up their Vanity and Self-Conceit and how useless and unreal or often
simply silly it all is? Suppose at one stroke a magician could remove
from all humanity Vanity and Self-Conceit—that is, False Personality
—can you conceive the transformation that would take place all the
world over? Can you imagine how many lies would cease to be told
and lived and how many useless activities would straightway end? I
think it is not too much to say that a major part of life as we know it
922
would cease to exist. Nor is it too much to say that most people would
not know what to do when they were thus purified and freed from
Personality. But to be suddenly awakened in this way would rob most
people of their very lives. They would not know what to do or who
they were. For this reason all awakening must be a gradual process.
There cannot be a rude shock but a gradual inner development of
understanding through which a man gradually discards certain states
of himself and begins to prefer better states of himself through inner
choice. This leads gradually to awakening and when this path is
followed it is characterized by the fact that people may have apparently
quite by chance real moments in which they are close to the 3rd State
of Consciousness and they recognize that they are in some quite new
state which is accessible to them and which in ordinary life, when they
are completely identified both with themselves and with external events,
they do not know.
The first great stage of this Work is to awaken out of sleep. When
that is strongly enough established a man knows what he has to sacrifice,
what he has to die to, and he becomes able to sacrifice it, to die to it,
and then his re-birth begins—that is, real transformation. But for a
long time he is between two issues and then he must have great patience
with himself and not expect to attain what he has not yet sufficiently
paid for. We spoke once about patience as a very conscious thing
which has nothing to do with resignation. When we cannot break
through our bad states we must be patient with ourselves knowing the
situation but being unable for the time being to do anything about it.
We quoted the words of Christ which he spoke to his disciples when he
was telling them what they would have to endure. He said: "In your
patience ye shall win your souls," (Luke XXI 19), which means your
relationship to Real 'I'.
Now in this connection I wish to say a few words about the right
use of centres and parts of centres. We have to think about wasting
force. Mr. Ouspensky once said that one of the worst things to do was
to use higher parts of centres where only lower parts should be used.
Lower parts of centres are not necessarily wrong because they deal to
a large extent with our relationship to ordinary outside tasks. Without
them we would not get on in life. The whole thing, he said, depends
on gaining more light, more insight, through self-observation. Everyone
should know by inner sensitiveness the difference when right parts of
centres are working and when wrong parts are working. A man can
spend his time in doing some small unimportant thing with full attention when it is quite unnecessary and simply results in a waste of force.
On the other hand, he might do something that was important with
zero attention—that is, with small parts of centres. For example, he
might make an important decision with his formatory mind, simply by
association. He then uses the registering part of the Intellectual Centre
to make a decision whereas he should use the whole of the centre, both
the emotional and intellectual parts, before he makes a decision. To
923
make a decision about Aim, for instance, from this part of Intellectual
Centre, from such little 'I's, is to start from an active Do—i.e. a wrong
triad is formed. Aim should always start from understanding—that is,
from a passive Do. Only passive Do can lead to an ascending octave.
If a man thinks he can do in regard to his aim, he will inevitably be
unable to keep it. He will start from active Do. Many aims are made
in this way by little 'I's without a man's realizing what he is doing
and what second force he will be up against if he tries to follow his
decision. Of course he fails almost at once to keep his aim. He then
gets depressed and feels he cannot work and becomes negative because
he cannot work, and so on. He then begins to absorb negative thoughts
and feelings towards the Work, which is an extremely dangerous thing
to do. Once O. said: "Try to make important things important and
unimportant things unimportant." While speaking of this he mentioned parts of centres working with the wrong energy. I asked him
this question: "What is an example of parts of centres working with
the wrong energy?" He said: "One example is thinking in an excited
way. This is not necessarily emotional part working as well, because
when the Emotional Centre and the Intellectual Centre work rightly
in unison, thinking is not excited but very quiet and clear. What I
mean," he said, "is the wrong kind of energy working the thinking part
—-i.e. the energy may belong to some other centre such as the InstinctMoving Centre or the Sex Centre. In such a case an effort must be
made to prevent excited thinking by trying to get into the thinking
centre and thinking clearly what it is that one is saying or wants to say."
In this connection O. spoke about formulation. He said that just
ordinary conversation is one thing and thinking is another thing and
if one is going to think clearly while one is talking one should make an
effort of inner attention and try to see what it is that one wants to
express in words and find the right words. He added that often by
using some mechanical phrase, or a slang expression or a cliche, the
thought was interrupted and passed towards mechanical 'I's. "A
machine", he said, "works far better with more light. In other words,
we must use our machine more consciously at the right moment and
even when we are talking casually we should be a little aware of
ourselves and notice rather than observe what we are saying. We must
try", he said, "to live more consciously, both internally and outwardly."
Now this means we must try to have a more conscious relationship to our
thoughts and feelings and a more conscious relationship to the effects of
other people on us. All this leads to the attainment of the 3rd State of
Consciousness, the State of Self-Remembering, or Self-Awareness, or
Self-Consciousness. In connection with living more consciously both in
our relationship to ourselves and to other people, we have to study to
their very depths the many concealed actions of the False Personality
which spring from Vanity and Self-Conceit. We seek, in doing the 2nd
line of the Work, to live with one another in such a way that False
Personality plays a very small part in our relationships.
924
Quaremead, Ugley, August 3, 1946
A SHORT NOTE ON DIFFERENT WAYS OF
SELF-REMEMBERING
It has been said that Self-Remembering gives a shock to the whole
Being and actually provides better food for the cells of the body. But
we do not give this shock to ourselves ordinarily and for that reason it
is called the First Conscious Shock, because it has to be done deliberately.
It is not done in nature. The natural shock that is given to the body
is the act of breathing. The act of breathing gives a shock to the Food
Octave starting at 768 and transforming itself successively until it
reaches Si 12. This is a mechanical shock. Now the First Conscious
Shock is what was always emphasized in the earlier part of the teaching
as the most important and the most practical thing that we can do.
We must learn what it means to remember ourselves and practise it
every day at least more than once. Since it is so important it is always
a good thing to remind ourselves about it and once more to study it.
There are many different ways of remembering oneself but in every
case it means not identifying with something and so separating from
something by feeling one is different from it. There is no mechanical
way of Self-Remembering. It is, speaking on a lower scale, like saying
there is no mechanical way of self-observation. Both acts require
intelligence and consciousness and vision. A monk may mutter prayers
all day long and miss the mark completely. It might indeed be very
much better for him if he took in impressions at a particular moment
and did not mutter mechanical prayers. On one occasion, when
Mr. O. was asked: "What is this pill that Sly Man makes and
swallows?" he said that one meaning was that a Sly Man remembers
himself in different ways under different conditions. I will quote his
words. He was asked the question: "What is it that the fakir suffers
years to get and the monk weeks and the yogi days?" He answered:
"Understanding." He was then asked: "What is the pill that Sly Man
takes?" He said: "It is composed of many things. One must selfremember to be able to take the pill." He was then asked in some
connection that I have forgotten bearing on the same subject: "What
is the difference between desire and will?" He answered: "We can do
what we desire but if we do what we do not desire this shews Will." He
then added that all Self-Remembering must have an element of Willcontrol. It is an act of doing—the only one we can make.
Now we know that this Work teaches that the only place where we
can interfere with our machine in a right way is to give it the First
Conscious Shock, or the shock of Self-Remembering. That is why aim
must connect with Self-Remembering. To try to carry out aim without
any state of Self-Remembering accompanying it is to try to do from the
wrong place, from the machine itself. I once emphasized to you that
the Driver must climb up on to the box—that is, he must be on a higher
925
level before he can control the horse and carriage. Remember yourself
and then remember your aim.
O. said more definitely about Sly Man's pill that it was different
kinds of Self-Remembering. He said: "You must find it out for yourselves gradually. It has to do with different influences, one kind for one
person, one kind for another person, and so different for each person.
At different hours of the day it is different for each person." This means
that we must learn to remember ourselves in different ways. It is one
and the same thing only in the sense that it means that you separate
from and cease to identify with something that is getting hold of you.
Only in that respect it is always the same. It is always the same because
it is a lifting of oneself above the level of ordinary 'I's, above the stream
of thoughts, pre-occupations and moods, but the direction that it takes
will be different. Self-Remembering always means a fuller state of
consciousness, but you do not get a fuller state of consciousness by always
looking at things in the same way, because that will either miss the
mark or lead to mechanicalness. If one always looks through an eastern
window, one will not see the sun all day. If you are in a bad state you
remember yourself in one way, and when in a good state you have to
remember yourself in another way and it is often more difficult. But
in every case you do not give full belief to your state but to something
you could be and indeed once were—something you have forgotten.
In the act of Self-Remembering you distinguish yourself from the person
you have become in life. And you distinguish yourself from your present
thought and mood. Slowly it is given you to see that all this is not 'I'.
Otherwise one simply remains one's random foolish thoughts and useless
states—a kaleidoscope—and this is being asleep in mechanical states,
in typical faults. Then we are at the mercy of every set of negative 'I's
that seek to destroy us—and of these we have enough. Do you realize
that everyone is being eaten all the time by bad states, bad 'I's, by useless
identification, and so feeds the Moon? In a state of Self-Remembering
this is impossible. The influences of the Moon do not penetrate to the
3rd State of Consciousness. When we understand this we know we must
fight to remember ourselves. We simply must remember ourselves and
stop considering. Struggle not to believe your states—only the state of
Self-Remembering.
G. once said: "A man should be able to turn round in himself."
Now this means that he is stuck to nothing in himself. When we
identify we stick to things and so cannot get free and cannot turn round.
It is true things matter. But non-identifying matters most. Things both
matter and do not matter. It is a double feeling. Things are serious and
not serious. People pestered Mr. O. to explain exactly what the pill of
the Sly Man is. They were not content with having to study it for
themselves and with the hint that it was different forms of SelfRemembering at different times. He answered: "If you would not
identify with the idea of slyness, then you might understand better what
is meant." He sometimes said: "A man may pass into a relative state
926
of Self-Remembering without any direct effort. All that he notices is
that he is in an unusual state and that he is not identified with anything.
The whole of life and its cares is dropped away and yet he sees everything very clearly."
Now when we practise Self-Remembering we can have what we
want. We can have what we want as long as we do not identify with it,
because to identify is to cease to remember. "What have I to do?" was
the constant cry in the early years of this Work. And the answer was
always the same: "All you have to do is to remember yourself." Now
if you think that this is a giving up of yourself you are quite wrong. It
is finding yourself and losing what you took as yourself—all this mess
one is. If we can get as far in this Work as to know Self-Remembering
and to realize when we are not remembering ourselves we have gone a
long way and reached a goal. For in this state of Self-Remembering,
in the 3rd State of Consciousness, influences can reach us which cannot
reach us otherwise—in fact, help can reach us. We are taught internally. Once we know or witness this help as a personal experience we
understand the Work because its knowledge has led us to this point of
perceiving truth. We see what the Work means, without words, because
it shews itself. So I remind you again: "Try to remember yourself, do
not merely think about it or discuss it, but try to do it privately,
intimately; and if you can as yet do nothing better, try to stop your
thoughts, try to separate from your inner state as it is at this moment
and regard it as being of no consequence and not you. This may open
something, may lift something up to the level of the 3rd State of
Consciousness. Something at a higher level will then recognize you,
become aware of you, as if you have stepped through a door."
Quaremead, Ugley, August 10, 1946
A NOTE ON SECOND BODY
To be happy apart from outer circumstances is a goal well worth
striving for. Our happiness, such as we are, depends on outer conditions. The man who has reached a stage in which he has something
independent of outer conditions, something which is independent of
failure or success, cold or heat, discomfort or comfort, starvation or
plenty, such a man has Second Body. What does it mean, Second Body?
As we are, we only have one formed body—namely, the physical body—
but it is possible for a man to form another body within himself. This
is one of the teachings of the Work. This Second Body does not depend
on the first body but in fact can control it. Whatever the circumstances
affecting the first body, whether it is in prison or not, whether it is in
discomfort or comfort, whether it is surrounded by evidences of wealth
927
and power or by poverty, this Second Body remains uninfluenced. In
the practice of non-identifying we begin to make this Second Body and,
in fact, everything the Work teaches is connected with this goal. It is
said that a person who is always making requirements is always
unhappy. What does it mean, making requirements? It means that
your happiness depends on certain outer things being right according
to how you think they should be right. You don't like these people, you
don't like these circumstances, you object to this or that, and so on. In
such a case, you are making requirements and your happiness will
depend on outer things which, if they are not what you consider right,
will plunge you into depression and negativeness. Such a person has no
inner state sufficiently developed—that is, no Second Body—to make it
possible for him or her to be independent of the ever-changing conditions
of life. It may surprise you to be told that you can often find happiness,
when everything is going wrong, by practising the Work. You know
that it has been said that everything that happens in life is a means and
not an end. But have you thought what this signifies? Whatever the
circumstances you are in, they can be taken from the Work point of
view as a means for non-identifying. Do you see what is meant? People
take life as an end and they do things in life from this point of view.
They always seek results. They work for results. If they encounter
failure they are rendered miserable. But in this Work we are told not
to work for results, but whatever we do to practise non-identifying and
Self-Remembering. Now if your happiness depends on the praise of
other persons you are a machine. If your happiness depends on making
money, again you are a machine, because you may lose money and
destroy yourself. If your happiness depends on people treating you
rightly according to your picture of yourself, surely something is wrong.
To be always making accounts which arise out of making requirements
cannot possibly be a source of inner peace of mind. To be always
thinking that things are not as you wish them can only make you
continually unhappy and negative. It is you yourself who have to
awaken and have to hold in yourself the secret of being happy. And this
holding means sealing yourself from the effects that outside events, outside conditions, have hitherto mechanically had on you. All of us have
acquired absurdly typical ways of behaving towards people and outer
conditions. It is just here that one can separate oneself by noticing
through self-observation how one is reacting to the moment. Yes, it is
well worth just noticing this—and often during each day.
Now in connection with all this, which you have already heard very
often, I would like to-night to speak briefly once more about pictures,
roles and attitudes. When a man or a woman has a strong picture of
themselves they are liable to be vexed by life. A picture of oneself is
a fixed form of imagination about oneself. I used to think myself a good
boy. (I need not say that it was along time ago). It was quite definitely
a picture of myself. Naturally, being a good boy, I could never tell a
lie, and naturally, of course, I told a good many lies. I could not see the
928
dark side of myself, what I actually was, but was kept on one side
through the influence of the picture. You will be able to see that by
having this picture of myself I told more lies than I needed. Everything
false arouses its opposite. Now you know that we have to accept the
opposite side of ourselves, or the dark side, which simply means the side
that we are not properly conscious of and do not accept. Consciousness
is light. What we are not properly conscious of is dark to us—i.e. in
obscurity. A great deal of work has to be done for many years just
exactly on this point. This is a very useful place to work on because it
brings into the light of consciousness, through self-observation, knowledge of yourself that contradicts the pictures of yourself that have
hitherto had power over you. It would be marvellous if our pictures fell
away. A picture of oneself shuts out any reality. It is a picture and not
what we really are. This picture prevents us from accepting sides of
ourselves that do not agree with our pictures of ourselves. In consequence we get divided into a light and a dark side, and this creates
great disharmony. One can see people living all the time in a picture
of themselves and being constantly vexed or surprised.
The next point is roles. Everyone has typical roles that he plays.
A person probably has five or six roles that he uses for ordinary life.
Now it is wrong to say that people use these roles. The right way of
putting it is that these roles use people. Let us say an innkeeper once
entertained royalty. This forms a role and he can never stop talking
from this role which is like a gramophone record. I remember once
that a question was asked in one of the earlier meetings in London as
to how it is that people who in ordinary life seem to be at ease and talk
a great deal become silent in the atmosphere of the Work. One reason
is because they cannot use their ordinary life-roles. They can, so to
speak, turn nothing on and therefore do not know where they are.
Now this means we live in some kind of artificial state. When you talk
to a man with a lot of roles you get an impression that he is not there
just as you do when you talk to people who have very strong pictures of
themselves.
The third point is attitudes. Pictures, roles and attitudes prevent
us from any real understanding of ourselves or of our lives and they all
make us dependent on outer conditions. A man or a woman full of
pictures, roles or attitudes cannot form Second Body. He cannot get
behind himself—cannot separate himself. How then is this to be
remedied? It is only remedied by gradually seeing pictures, by becoming aware of roles, by becoming conscious of attitudes. So it is necessary
to observe oneself. Attitudes are very easily formed by upbringing. You
are taught that this point of view is right and thereby you have an
attitude laid down from an early age. You may, for instance, have
been brought up amongst anarchists and think they are right. How
easily our psychology can be seized hold of and spoilt by outer things!
Now how can a man be happy in himself when he is full of unconscious
roles, of pictures and acquired attitudes that act on him all day.
929
Realizing this, it is well worth while in the great discipline of selfobservation to notice very carefully what vexes you, what destroys such
happiness as you are capable of experiencing. When you have made a
good observation, try to find out whether it is due to a picture of yourself
that was not satisfied by the behaviour of someone, or a role that you
turned on that met with no praise, or an attitude that was completely
useless. How often I have heard it said, in the earlier Work, to myself
and to other people: "You have a wrong attitude—you are taking
things in the wrong way owing to your attitude." As you know,
attitudes are probably always negative attitudes from which we judge
things and people. To be free, to begin to see things a little more as
they really are, to begin to see other people a little more as they really
are, how is this possible if we are full of pictures and attitudes that
make us blind? How can we possibly imagine we can make simple
relationships if we turn on our typical roles and boast? It was once
said: "Try to notice when you are talking from attitudes and try to
notice when you are talking from roles." If you cannot do this, try
to notice it in other people who are doing the same. All these things
belong to the external psychology, to the acquired Personality, which
we have to make passive through self-observation and the insight and
understanding that results from it.
The outer psychology must be eventually controlled by the inner
psychology. This is reversal. This is the formation of a second organized
body—an organized psychological body—composed of finer matters
than the physical body. The beginning is self-observation and the
memory and insight that arise from it. Through this we begin to form
a new inner psychology that looks at the outer psychology—Second Body.
Through this we begin to be more and more independent of the outer
psychology and what is happening to it. So we begin to understand
what happiness depends on.
Quaremead, Ugley, August 17, 1946
ON AWAKENING FROM SLEEP
We are studying a system of ideas sometimes called esoteric
Christianity and which amongst ourselves we call the Work. This
system of ideas shews us quite definite lines upon which we have to
work on ourselves and all this work on ourselves depends on observing
ourselves far more consciously than we ever do in life and observing
ourselves in certain definite directions laid down by the Work. This
Work is based on the idea that we are not properly conscious as we are
now, but that a quite definite increase of consciousness is possible
through which we begin to evolve. Mankind at present, this Work
930
teaches, is not properly conscious and only by an evolution of consciousness can it reach any desirable state. It also teaches that because
Man is not properly conscious everything that happens in the world,
all disasters, wars, and other evils, necessarily take place, simply because
Man is not properly conscious and does not know what he is doing or
saying. Now we are taught in this Work that consciousness cannot
develop unconsciously but by effort. Mankind at present is used by
nature and so everything happens in the only way it can happen, but
if Man became more conscious things would happen differently. In
this Work we are told that a certain number of people can always
become conscious at certain periods if they are willing to work on themselves and study how they are not conscious yet and how they can
increase consciousness in themselves, and for this reason the Work begins
with self-observation. A man must observe himself, he must notice
himself, and gradually he must distinguish himself from this mechanical
figure that he has hitherto been. By this personal work he can attain
a higher level of consciousness called in this system the level of SelfConsciousness, Self-Remembering or Self-Awareness. These levels of
consciousness are indicated by the following diagram:
Levels of Consciousness
As Man is, he lives in this second so-called waking state in which
everything happens in the only way it can happen by innumerable
chains of Cause and Effect. An evolution of mankind is impossible in
a general sense. One man can evolve and become more conscious but
humanity cannot do so unless each person works for an increase of
consciousness, and such a thing is very unlikely—in fact, totally impossible for many reasons.
The state of Consciousness we seek to reach is the 3rd State—the
State of Self-Remembering. So it is said so often in this Work that we
must remember ourselves and that if we sincerely begin to try to
remember ourselves we will gradually be shewn how to practise SelfRemembering at different moments and the different efforts needed.
The first step however is to realize through the effort of long, uncritical
931
self-observation that we do not remember ourselves and that, in fact, all
the time we are in a state of sleep. In this state of sleep we carry on our
lives, we speak thousands of words a day, we make love, we write books,
we kill one another. All is done in sleep.
This is one of the first things we are told—the first mystery, so to
speak, that the Work teaches, the truth of which we have to realize for
ourselves. Mankind is asleep. Yes—but you are asleep too. That is
the point you have to see through your own uncritical self-observation.
It is only when we begin to realize that we are asleep and that we are
mechanical and not conscious beings, that we begin to awaken. Very
much is said in the New Testament about Man being asleep and about
the necessity of awakening. The word for "awaken" is unfortunately
translated as "watch". It should be "awaken". Many words in the
Gospels are wrongly translated, as μετάνοια, which does not mean
"repentance" but "change of mind", change of the whole way of
thought—such as a man undergoes when he realizes that the Conscious
Circle of Humanity exists and that the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven
is true. Another word that is wrongly translated is άμαρτάνοΐ, which is
rendered as "sin", when it means "missing the mark". The mark a man
must aim at is the Kingdom of Heaven and for this he must first reach a
state of Self-Remembering—that is, the 3rd State of Consciousness. He
must aim at awakening, at becoming more conscious, at remembering
himself, at being aware of himself. In my case, for example, I must be
continually aware of Dr. Nicoll and feel more and more something in
me that is distinct from him and that lies more interiorly behind him.
In this way Personality becomes passive and Essence is activated.
Essence lies behind Personality. The Personality that life has formed
in you is not you. It is not I—but it calls itself I. It says I to you and
you say I to it. This is sleep.
In order to remember himself more and more deeply, a man must
believe in the existence of Greater Mind and he must begin to think
psychologically apart from thinking literally. He must feel another
reality of himself than that derived from life or parents. The Lord's
Prayer begins with the raising of the whole meaning of oneself to
another level of Consciousness, "Our Father which art in Heaven" . . .
We must remember that this Work teaches that Essence comes down
from a very high level in the descending Ray of Creation—that level
in inner, invisible space that is represented in outer visible space by the
Starry Galaxy. As was indicated above, the teaching of a higher level
of Consciousness is not possible as long as the external world is taken
as the sole reality. The first step is psychological understanding as
distinct from literal understanding. In the parables that we have
discussed so far we have seen that they cannot be understood literally
but have a psychological meaning apart from their literal sense. And
just as art is not a physical fact but an interpretation that is psychological and transmitted by the artist, so is all development to a higher
level psychologically something apart from physical fact with which the
932
senses deal. In other words, psychological or spiritual development,
psychological or spiritual understanding, is something abstracted from
the literal facts of the senses. The inner development of Man is not
through the physical sciences and can never be unless the ultimate
findings of physical science pass into spiritual meaning. It is psychological understanding that raises a man above the sensual level of the
mind. In speaking of the meaning of what he taught, Christ said:
"It is the spirit that causeth to live: the flesh profiteth nothing. The
words I speak unto you are spirit and will live." {John VI 63.) A man
governed by his senses and believing only in the realities shewn by his
five senses and refusing to believe that he is anything else, anything
above physical reality, a man who believes nature created itself
accidentally—that the atom somehow or other naturally came into
existence with its terrible chained forces—such a man is dead in himself. He is dead psychologically, spiritually. Christ said that it was
necessary for a man to "enter into life." That means to enter into a
form of understanding which is not based on the senses—into a spiritual
understanding of himself and others.
The power of the evident external world united to the power of
science makes everyone think that the direction of Man's development
lies outside him in the investigation and control of matter. But if we
study esoteric ideas in both the Old and the New Testaments we find
a quite contrary teaching. In the Old Testament the passage of the
Children of Israel from Egypt is used as a "type" or image. St. Paul
says: "These things happened to them for types." (I. Cor. X 11). It
represents the passage of Man from a literal, sensual understanding to
a psychological or spiritual understanding of his meaning. It is said
in Isaiah (XXXI 3): "Egypt is flesh, not spirit." Egypt is Man, not
God, and his horses are flesh, not spirit. The horse is an ancient symbol
for the intellect. Horses of flesh mean the intellect chained to the senses
and believing only the evidence of the senses. We also find that a
sensual man who follows only what he sees and is without any ideas
which can develop psychological understanding is called a man who
dies or is dead. This does not refer to physical death. It refers to the
soul, to the psychological side of Man—for a man can be psychologically
dead and physically alive. It is said in Ezekiel: "The soul that misseth
the mark, it shall die," but the prophet adds that if a man turn from his
mechanical way of behaving and tries to live according to what he has
been taught, then "he shall surely live, he shall not die." By going
against himself—that is, against his soul—he shall find a new life in
himself, a new meaning. Such a man will begin to live differently in
the midst of life because he is no longer living just from himself, from
his self-will, but living from a series of ideas that he has been taught
and that have nothing to do with external life but refer to the inner
development of his own psychology to a higher level. So it is said that
if a man who has been living anyhow and following his undeveloped
soul, which, nearly an animal, is the chief seat of his desire and self-love
933
—if such a man will turn, then "all his transgressions that he hath
committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness
that he hath done he shall live." (Ezekiel XVIII 22.) God is made by
the prophet to ask: "Have I any pleasure at all, if the wicked should
die" (i.e. die spiritually) "and not that he should return from his way
and live?" (Ezekiel XVIII 23.) All this is about awakening from
sleep, by going against one's mechanical behaviour, mechanical
thoughts and opinions, mechanical feelings.
In the New Testament the two kinds of men are mentioned. One
is called "the psychic man"—that is, the man who follows his soul.
This is the mechanical man, for the soul, unless opposed, does not grow,
and remains the point of the most intense desire and self-love. The
second kind of man is the spiritual or pneumatic man (πνεύμα-spirit).
Christ speaks often about the necessity of being born of the spirit and
becoming the spiritual or pneumatic man—a second man within the
man of flesh. For this reason Christ says: "Greater love hath no man
than this, that a man goes against his soul for his friends." (John XV
13.) This is rendered "lay down his life" which does not include the
full meaning. To go against one's soul is exactly what we have to do
in this Work. If you understand that this undeveloped soul is the seat
of every mechanical desire, of vanity, pride, jealousy, and all the rest,
you will then understand why the Work opens, on its practical side,
with the teaching that one must begin to go against mechanicalness in
oneself. But it begins actually with self-observation, with observing
what is mechanical in you. And if you do this sincerely you will very
soon realize that you are mechanical in the Intellectual Centre, in the
Emotional Centre, and in the Moving Centre and in the Instinctive
Centre. We are, in short, a mass of habits. That is, we are simply
machines. We say the same things over and over again, we react to
events in the same way, we get angry in the same way, we become
negative in the same way. All this keeps us in a state of sleep—i.e. at
the 2nd level of consciousness.
Quaremead, Ugley, August 8, 1946
FURTHER NOTE ON SECOND BODY
If a man follows the Work and practises it from his understanding
and wills it from his understanding he begins to make Second Body in
himself. Actually he is working in other rooms—that is, in the rooms
of Third and Fourth Bodies. To work is to obey. To obey is to will.
To act from the Work is to remember oneself. To remember oneself is
to begin to make something new—i.e. Second Body. In this paper I
am going to talk simply about "Second Body", although at the same
934
time this includes the formation of further bodies. If you will this Work
and what it teaches and do it you will form something in yourself
different from your mechanical psychology. You will form a new body.
All this Work is so arranged in every detail that if you understand and
practise it and more and more feel its daily presence, and try to will it
and so to obey it, you will form a new psychology in yourself distinct
from the multiple chaotic psychology of many 'I's that people possess
ordinarily and believe to be a real 'I'. The difficulty is that people do
not see that they have to obey and will this Work in their daily life—in
daily incidents. People hear this Work time and again and still behave
in daily life as if they have never heard what it teaches. Then, for
example, they begin to argue as to whether one must become Balanced
Man before one can form Second Body. The point is simply that if you
hear, understand and will and so obey this Work you will reach a new
stage of yourself. The Work will do the rest for you. A man, a woman,
must live this Work.
Now let us try to understand in the simplest possible way what it
means to hear, understand, will and so do this Work. Take the single
point that you have to observe Personality in yourself through selfobservation. This is connected with the supreme teaching that Personality must eventually be made passive in us before all the inner
changes possible to Man can take place. Your Personality at present
is in chaos, in disorder. It has no organization, although through the
agency of Imaginary 'I' it pretends to have and deludes you. Your
Personality is nothing but a mass of acquired contradictory 'I's and each
'I' at any particular moment can take complete charge of you. Now if
you could hear, understand and obey the Work this would be impossible,
for then your Work-'I's would take charge of you. At present a man
who simply goes with his changing 'I's—that is, an ordinary mechanical
man—has, in G's words, no real psychology and is nothing but a
machine. If we follow Personality and its multiplicity of changing 'I's
we are machines and we live under the hypnotism of Imaginary 'I'—
that is, we imagine that we have a real permanent 'I'. Now through
long self-observation this false idea of ourselves is gradually done away
with. This happens when the Work begins to make Personality passive.
As we are, we are victimized by the most stupid and silly little 'I's that
take charge of us and which we imagine really know what is good and
bad.
Now if we hear, understand and begin to obey the Work, we shall
be gradually shewn what is really good and bad. For example, all
negative emotions are bad, and must be worked against to our utmost
capacity in daily life. Again, all forms of internal considering, of making
accounts against others, are bad, and must be worked against. Again,
all forms of self-justifying are bad. Again, and supremely, identifying
is bad and must be struggled with in every possible way for the rest of
our lives.
Let us take in the last connection a man who has a great deal of
935
self-pride. He is of course convinced that he understands what is good
and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, and he acts accordingly, even though it is quite contrary to what the Work would teach
him. In this case, he neither hears nor understands nor obeys the Work.
He will probably only add the idea of the Work to his self-pride and use
the Work in this way. He will feel himself greater than the Work and
so his Personality will be kept active. In other words, the Work will not
reach him in his internal depths and start something growing there
—namely, the growth of his Essence or real part. As you know, we are
taught that in looking for Chief Feature we have to observe what
belongs to our self-love and self-pride as one clue. In that case, the only
approach to further inner development is through humility, through the
real experience, constantly renewed, that one does not know—in fact, that
one knows nothing but is always pretending to know. I often talk to
you about the feeling of self-merit, the feeling that one is a special case,
as it were, different from other people, the feeling of self-complacency,
mild or arrogant superiority, and so on. All this arises from self-pride
and self-love. A man must come eventually to the point in which he
realizes clearly that he is nothing. Then he can become something.
Then the Work takes the place of what he imagined. A man's self-pride
can stand in the way of the Work acting on him and, in fact, it does,
for many years, and he has, so to speak, fits of tremendous self-pride
followed by fits of inner humiliation and for a long time he does not feel
humility as his most real, interesting side and self-pride as his tiresome
artificial side, and so does not catch the many forms of cognition and
internal perception that are associated with the momentary absence of
self-pride. This is the same as what happens in ordinary life amongst
religious people. They profess to believe in God, but internally they do
not. They believe in themselves. One can profess to believe in this
Work, but internally one does not. However a few 'I's may, and then
a long struggle has to take place inevitably between the 'I's that believe
in this Work—that is, in something higher—and the 'I's that do not.
When a man is in his Work-'I's he is quite different, but any accidental
outer circumstance may suddenly shift him into his life-'I's which do not
believe in the Work—that is, that do not believe there is anything higher
than sensual external life. In this sense a man has to struggle between
sense and spirit. All esotericism teaches the same thing and you will
find it on every page in the Gospels. Now remember that there is no
reason why you should do this Work. Always remember this. Always
face yourself with this point—namely, that there is no reason why you
should do this Work. There is no external proof of it. You can go on
with life just as you do go on with it always. No one is asked to do this
Work. It is simply a matter of your own choice. You are under no
vows. But if you begin to hear it and if what you hear penetrates to a
deeper level and you begin to understand something of it and begin to
try to obey it in your daily life, then the internal thing that holds you
to this Work will be your understanding. A man can easily go against
936
his understanding, but in this case he will then find himself back in
life just as he was. And if he finds this more satisfactory he should go
back and forget as soon as possible any understanding of this Work that
he possessed. In fact, he need not forget, because the Work will vanish
from him by itself. In such a case a man will remain in the same state
of his psychology as formerly. He will remain a mass of contradictory
'I's that take charge of him and compel him to do things at different
times and to think that 'I' is acting. Such a man will of course never form
a new psychological body in himself: he will live and die in multiplicity of
being. He will have no self-knowledge and, in short, he will have done
nothing for himself during his life-time except serve mechanical life.
I wonder if some of you still think you should serve mechanical life as
it is now. I ask you: have you faced yourselves with this question? Look
at life now. Do you think it leads anywhere?
Now let us talk further about the question of Chief Feature being in
some cases connected with self-pride, which we cannot separate from
self-love. Such a man will always want to have his own way. Therefore
he will not be able to obey the Work because the Work asks him to go
against his self-will. It will not be something bigger than he is himself.
You cannot obey something that you feel is smaller than yourself. This
man will often feel that he is doing what ought to be done, what he
thinks is right, but he will be having his own way—i.e. he will be acting
from his self-love or his self-will. Self-pride, self-love and self-will cannot
be separated. The self-pride is a manifestation of the self-love and the
self-will is a manifestation of both. As I have often told you, when some
of us were in France we were told that Personality had scarcely any
right to exist. The will of Personality had to be sacrificed. A person
may have objections to this and objections to that or he may make these
requirements or those requirements before he agrees to anything. All
these will be manifestations of the Personality under the aspect of selfpride, self-love and self-will—that is, the Work will not come first, but
the self-will, the self-love, will come first. The mechanical, acquired
Personality will direct one's life. The difficulty is that a person, whether
man or woman, does not see for a long time that this may be the case.
People, I notice, either pride themselves on being proud or say they
have no pride. Self-pride is in everyone but in some the Chief Feature
is very directly connected with it and in others only indirectly. Pride is
a very latent quality in us all which is not easy to observe, but it can
form a very strong barrier to a further step in development. We justify
our pride very easily but when we begin by inner perception to taste
this cold, hard, unforgiving quality we realize how important it is to
soften it and put ourselves in the position of those we condemn through
it or feel better than. You know the disciples were not accused of
vanity. I often think that one of the distinctions between pride and
vanity is as follows: vanity wants to be first, like those two disciples who
wanted to sit one on the right hand and one on the left hand of Christ
in Heaven, but pride is rather in what Peter said when he exclaimed:
937
"If I must die with thee, I will not deny thee." But he did. Through
fear he denied Christ. Now suppose you begin to see pride as a personal
daily experience through self-observation. Then you see one of these
two giants that walk in front of us and decide our lives. If you understand something of the Work and have begun to wish to hold on to it
so that it may change you in the indescribable and unfathomable way
in which it does, once you value it enough, then you will see that you
must obey the Work and put it higher than yourself by struggling
against this pride, against the forms in which it expresses itself in your
life. Remember we are now speaking of pride as a source of Chief
Feature. Then you will be hearing, understanding and obeying the
Work and this will begin to make in you a new psychology, a new person,
which we can call Second Body. Do not begin to argue about something that does not concern us at present, as to whether such efforts will
make Second, Third or Fourth Bodies. Such efforts will make a new
body in you, a new person, a new psychology, because you will begin to
follow, to practise, the Work itself. The Work itself is an organized
whole which can create in you a new organism, a second and new
person.
Remember that the Work is not by addition to what you are, but
by transformation of what you are. The Work is to change you, not to
add something to you as you are, but to change completely what you
are now. You cannot do this Work and remain the same. You cannot
add the new wine to the old bottle of yourself. Ask yourselves, some of
you, have you really changed at all, and do you really wish to change
yourself? Or are you full of self-merit? And if you wish to change, what
is it you have to change, from what you understand of the teaching of
the Work? Let me remind you of these words: "To act from the Work
is to remember yourself." Then you will will the Work against your
self-will. Even Christ himself said that He did not do His own will but
the Will of Him that had sent Him. Do you see what esotericism means?
The Work and all its careful and lovely teachings gives an opportunity
of willing what it teaches and not acting from self-will. Self-will gets us
nowhere. But meditate on what the Work teaches and notice whether
you have ever, in your life, really acted from the Work—-that is, if you
have heard, understood and obeyed it at any moment.
938
Quaremead, Ugley, August 31, 1946
RECAPITULATION ON ESSENCE AND PERSONALITY
Essence comes down to Earth and there is formed for it a physical
body out of substances derived from both parents. Out of these substances, which make separate and distinct sets of the necessary materials
for the formation of a body, some are selected from one parent and
some from the other parent, the rest being discarded. The Essence is
prior to the body through which it makes contact with the world. In
this respect the Work corrects our customary sense-based view that the
parents make the child. They supply certain materials which are made
in them, and everything else is done. The only thing that can be said
to be done by the parents is to bring the two sets of materials together.
Then, if there is an individual Essence seeking manifestation, a child
results. Now the death of several million beings, in the form of sperms,
is involved in this first contact of Essence with the Earth. The presence
of and the death of these vast quantities of living cells seems necessary
for one of them to pass from the cosmos of cells to the cosmos of Man
and so attain its goal by full development. We understand that the
object of Essence in coming down to this Earth and seeking a body is
to enable it to reach full development. But we are told that Essence
can only grow to a certain limited extent under ordinary circumstances
and that it requires a special food to develop any further. We may be
sure that this special food will involve the death of something else. In
this case it involves the death of Personality. First there is Essence,
which can only grow to a limited extent. Understand here that the
body is not the Essence itself. The body becomes full grown of itself
if provided with physical food. But this is not the case with the Essence,
which needs psychological food. The history of the development of the
Essence is not the history of the development of the body. A fully
developed body does not mean a fully developed Essence. A savage
may have the strength of three ordinary men and the mind of a child
of two. That is the tragedy. First, then, there is Essence and body only.
Then Essence is active. Next there is formed gradually around Essence
a covering called Personality and this surrounds the Essence. In the
meantime the body continues to grow. As a rule a man does not reach
any further stage. His body grows. His Essence remains undeveloped
beyond a short growth, and Personality is formed. The man's centre
of gravity of consciousness shifts more and more into the outer covering
called Personality that life is forming in him, chiefly by imitation. The
man, as it were, passes outwards into what is not him. In this way the
Personality becomes active and the Essence becomes passive.
Few having passed in this outward direction under the hypnotic
action of life ever return. But a great deal is said in esoteric literature,
as, for instance, in the Gospels, about turning. A man who lives and dies
in this state, in which Personality is active and Essence passive, is
939
incomplete, unfinished. Such a man is sometimes called a seed, an
acorn, an ear of wheat, or sometimes an unfinished house. In a general
sense he is called Man asleep. The food that Essence needs for its
further development is the Personality that has been formed round it.
But it depends on the understanding of the man whether the Essence
will get this food. Mechanically this will not happen. He must begin
to awaken before this is possible and for this he must get knowledge.
Through awakening he feels himself less and less through his Personality.
In this sense Personality begins to die. Many 'I's must die for the man
to be born. So here we see some analogy. These 'I's which form the
population of the Personality have to be set in the right order—namely,
the 'I's that can awaken must be set over those that cannot. An evil 'I',
a negative 'I', must die. That is, it must be relegated to the furthestaway place and given no nourishment. Psychologically, we are most
what we nourish most: and we nourish most what we love most. If we
love negative 'I's most we nourish them most. By ceasing to love many
'I's whose quality we see in the light of the Work, we cease to feed them
with our force and they begin to shrink. But they will soon recover and
begin to speak, if you give them your blood to drink. When we draw
force, through non-identifying, from an 'I', and if we understand why
we are doing it, the force is taken from Personality in the direction of
Essence. So we have to attack Personality in order to weaken it. All
we learn in the Work has this for its object. Self-observation is to make
Personality conscious to us, with all its 'I's, its attitudes, buffers, pictures,
roles, etc. If we do not work on Personality it will use all our force for
itself and give nothing to Essence. Essence, which is really ourself, will
be starved. If we do nothing with Personality we remain therefore
seeds—unfinished houses—people asleep in ourselves—and as such,
since we were created self-developing organisms, we are useless experiments, failures, whatever position we hold in the world. The Essence
has been connected with a body, the body has grown up. The Essence
has grown a little and Personality has surrounded it. Everything is now
ready for the work of self-development through the death of Personality.
It is at this stage that self-development can begin. But as a rule nothing
further takes place. Man lives and dies a seed—asleep, in a world of
people asleep. But he does not guess that this is the actual case, although
he may have heard it often.
940
Great Amwell House, September 21, 1946
FURTHER NOTE ON SELF-REMEMBERING
In a recent paper reference was made to the Sly Man in the 4th
Way who knows how to make a pill and swallow it, instead of making
all kinds of painful, prolonged efforts such as the Fakir or Monk makes.
People can make all sorts of useless and unintelligent efforts to attain a
higher level of Being, by asceticism, by torturing their bodies, keeping
vows of silence, starving themselves, denying themselves all pleasure,
elaborate rituals, repeating prayers mechanically, constantly doing
unpleasant or unreasonable things, and so on. All this is not intelligent.
The Sly Man sees what is wrong with him at the moment by selfobservation and acknowledges it—that is, swallows it—and thereafter
remembers himself in connection with it. He works personally on himself. Making the pill is only possible through seeing oneself by direct
self-observation—that is, by personal work and formulating what one
sees. In this way, one sees what effort is needed for oneself at a particular
time in order to keep awake. What is needed by one person at a given
time may be quite different from what is needed by another. For
example, the Lord's Prayer can be seen as the Prayer of "Sly Man".
Notice it is said first that it is useless to pray by vain repetitions: "In
praying use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do: for they think they
shall be heard for their much speaking." (Matt. VI 7.) What is meant
is not directly said—namely, that prayer must be conscious and not
mechanical. It must be conceived by the mind and its meaning seen
internally in relation to one's state of Being. Every word must be said
consciously with full meaning. In this prayer (which we gabble in
Church uselessly) we ask for daily bread: "Give us this day our daily
bread." But in the Greek it does not mean daily but "what is needful."
It also has the meaning of "trans-substantial bread" or "what is beyond
ourselves." Bread does not mean literal bread, but "bread from
heaven"—that is, psychological bread, psychological insight, mental
nourishment, coming from a higher level, and so shewing us what is
wrong and violent in our level of ourselves. To paraphrase the section:
"Give us this day our daily bread" means "May we be given vision and
insight and new meaning to-day so that we know what to do and how
to work on ourselves to-day." So in one sense the pill is this "heavenly
painful bread" that we have to swallow. It is the same as the manna
in the desert. It is just as if we prayed to be able directly and sincerely
to observe ourselves in the light of the Work and so through its mental
illumination see what it is necessary to work on, and what has to be
not identified with, etc.—and accept this flash of given insight or light
—take it inwards and not argue about it or self-justify, but accept,
acknowledge its truth. But most people argue about any true internal
or external criticism of themselves and so do not swallow it—that is,
accept it, and see it as truth about themselves.
941
When we are shewn something about our state of Being, whether
by inner perception or by an outward suggestion or hint, we do not
make a pill of it—that is, formulate it—nor swallow it—that is, accept
it—as truth. But if we did, this would lead to direct and intelligent
effort based on understanding. This is the way of Sly Man—that is,
intelligent Man—and it is incommensurably superior to breathing
exercises, ritual, starvings, torturings of the body, following mechanical
disciplines, and so on. The 4th Way is based on understanding. The
Work is the 4th Way—that is, it is not the Way of Fakir or the Way of
Monk, or the Way of Yogi. In this Work understanding is the most
powerful thing you can develop. Therefore it is necessary to begin to
to try to understand what this Work teaches and see for oneself why it
teaches it. What does that mean? It means in brief that you must
understand for yourself why negative emotions must go, understand why
self-justifying must go, why lying and deceit must go, why internal
considering and grievances and making internal accounts must go.
(Notice the Lord's Prayer says: "Forgive us as we forgive others.")
You must understand for yourself why egotistical phantasies must go,
why self-pity and sad regrets must go, why hating must go, why the
state of inner sleep must go, why ignorance must go, why buffers and
attitudes and pictures of yourself must go, why False Personality, with
its two giants walking in front of you, Pride and Vanity, must go, why
ignorance of oneself must be replaced by real uncritical self-knowledge
through observation, why external considering is always necessary, and
finally you must understand and see why Self-Remembering is utterly
and totally necessary for you at all times if you want to awaken from
the great sleep-inducing power of nature and the increasing masshypnotism of external life. All this is the Work and what it teaches
—namely, what it is we have to do in order to awaken from the state
of sleep in which we live.
Now if you see by uncritical self-observation something, let us say,
arising solely out of False Personality, out of vanity and self-love, and
so out of wrong self-memory, controlling you and speaking out of you
and directing all your emotions and thoughts and facial expressions
and movements, and if you see it clearly and formulate it—then you
make a pill. Yes, but can you roll it between your fingers? Is it so
clear, so definite, so objective yet? No, but it can become so, asunderstanding of what the Work is about becomes stronger and as you
become more responsible for it. You have then to swallow the pill—
accept it—that is, see it is something in you and that you are wholly to
blame because you have been identifying and saying 'I' to this thing in
you up to now, which has been probably making you miserable and
everyone connected with you even more miserable. I will not say that
the swallowing of the pill is easy.
Now a person has no power of right self-observation save through
the force of the Work. So in the case of a person who is secretly insincere
in attitude to the Work you always find a curious inability to self942
observe. Such have no light to see themselves. There can be no
question of making a pill or of swallowing it in such cases. Consider
what has been so often said. You cannot understand the Work unless
you feel it—that is, value it. To understand in the Work-sense requires
to begin with the co-operation of two centres—the Intellectual Centre
and the Emotional Centre.
Great Amwell House, September 28, 1946
TIME-BODY
In connection with a remark that the feeling of Eternity enters into
Self-Remembering, and does not enter into self-observation, we can
remind ourselves of some of the ideas on Time which are accessory to
this teaching. There are three visible accessible dimensions and three
invisible and ordinarily inaccessible dimensions. From this point of
view the real world is six-dimensional. Owing to our limited senses
we know only a three-dimensional world moving in Time and this we
take as the real world—that is, as reality, as all that is or can be. We
base our thoughts on this visible three-dimensional world moving in
Time. That is, our way of thinking is moulded on this reality which is
evident to our limited senses. It is, however, necessary to change our
way of thinking if any development in the level of Being or any increase
of consciousness is the aim. This teaching, as it is so often emphasized,
is to make us think in a new way. Let me here ask you: have you begun
yet through contact with the ideas of this Work to think in a new way?
For this to become possible the mind must be changed by new ideas,
by means of which new, hitherto unused connections are opened. In
this way new and wider realities of the mind appear beyond the given
narrow realities of the senses, with a corresponding increase of consciousness. Briefly put, one is aware of more than one was, and this
in many unusual directions. Not only is the general range and grasp
of the mind increased, but the awareness of oneself. For instance, to
be told that one is asleep and mechanical and that one does not know
oneself are new ideas. When applied practically, through self-observation, these ideas open up many new connections in the mind—in fact,
so much so that the whole conception and feeling of oneself begins to
alter and a new self may become perceptible, hidden at some distance
behind what we have up to now thought to be ourselves and the only
possible form of ourselves. Let us take this point in connection with
dimensions. The 4th dimension is that of Time. We do not see
Time or ourselves in Time. We do not see the Time-Bodies of ourselves
or of things. We think the past is dead. Our lives are living lines in
living Time. Owing to our relation to Time, however, we see only a
943
point in Time and then another and so on, and we call them present
moments. Notice well that our five senses only work in the present
moment, only register the present moment—not the past or the future.
To see this clearly is the starting-point, in my opinion, of being able to
understand something about dimensions beyond the senses. Do you
realize clearly that you can only see or handle or taste an apple in the
present moment? You cannot do so a moment ago or a moment hence
—that is, in the past or in the future. So you are limited to this doubtful
thing called the present moment, and all else we call past or future and
regard as having no real existence. So we limit all possible existence to
the present moment and imagine God exists only in it. This is called
in this teaching, however, a cross-section of Time. Yet we are never in
contact with this fleeting present moment to which we confine all
existence. It is actual—yet it is doubtful—not to the senses but to
consciousness. Our senses relate us to a present moment but our
consciousness does not. We are not conscious in this present moment
of the senses. It is too small and too quick to be properly conscious in.
Our consciousness, working above sense, is a mingled confused thing,
composed of past, present and anticipated future. By memory and by
imagination we tend to live behind or in front of the present moment
and cannot crowd ourselves into it. So we are never really in the
external world as registered by the senses. They render things as it
were like a succession of photographs made to follow in moving rapid
succession, like a film. Yet, strange to say, each present moment is
eternal. The present moment is both in Time and in Eternity. It is
the meeting-place of Time and Eternity. Eternity enters every present
moment in moving Time, at right angles to it. That is why, sometimes, in a state of Self-Remembering—that is, in the 3rd State of
Consciousness—we feel Eternity. That is also why some things
in the past stand straight out of Time—often trivial things. This
is because at any moment, into any quiet unremarkable ordinary
moment, the dimension of Eternity enters and we may happen to
become conscious of it.
The relation of Time to Eternity is first represented by this
diagram:
The horizontal line represents Time—the 4th dimension. The
vertical lines represent the 5th dimension entering every moment every
944
part of Time at right angles. Or, more simply, Time and Eternity can
be represented as the Cross.
Man is both in Time and in Eternity. Eternity is vertical to Time
—and this is the direction of Self-Remembering—the feeling of oneself
now. Every now is eternal. To remember oneself the feeling of now
must enter—I here now—I myself now—I distinct from past or future—
the newness of myself—I now. And if the act is successful you will know
for yourself that Eternity is always in now and can be experienced as
a different taste from Time. Notice that I do not speak any longer
of the present moment registered by the senses, but of now, of this
internal experience that Self-Remembering can actually give. Real 'I'
is in Eternity—not in Time. Self-Remembering is out of Time and
Personality. It is not surprising that Self-Remembering can give a
feeling utterly different from that given by our relation to hurrying,
anxious Time. Essence, being eternal, has not the feelings of Personality which are of Time only. To think from Time gives no real feeling
of oneself, or rather it gives a wrong feeling—our usual feeling of
ourselves. This is our usual sense of ourselves. We can notice how
incomplete it is. Why do people act as they do? Because they do not
feel themselves rightly. We know already that the Work teaches that
we were created as an experiment—as self-developing organisms—and
therefore we can understand why we feel incomplete and why a man,
moulded only by life—that is, having only his acquired Personality
active—must always feel incomplete, unfinished, and so internally
helpless. It is not the force of life which lies in Time that can make
Personality passive—how could it, when it is the force that made it?
Only another force coming from a different direction can make
Personality passive and feed Essence—the eternal part of us. One can
then begin to see that all esoteric teaching must have the quality of
Eternity about it, and being so can develop Essence, which is eternal.
Through all Time, through all the ages, esoteric teaching remains the
same. It always says the same things. It always teaches the same
things. It is above Time and change. It is Eternity in Time—and so
it
speaks
always
of
eternal
life.
To return: the 4th dimension of Time contains all one's life. We
945
experience it moment by moment. It runs very fast and is only halted
by the feeling of now. Our life lying extended in this dimension,
inaccessible to our senses, is all there—in this invisible dimension. For
this reason everything we do now affects the past as well as the future
of our life. One act of non-identifying now influences your past as well
as your future. Your relation to people in the past will change, by work
on yourself now. Not only will you change your own past, but possibly
theirs. This is very difficult to grasp so I come back to the beginning of
this paper where it was said that to change our Being and to increase
consciousness we need new ideas beyond those given by the senses. It
was said in so many words that as long as our thinking is based only on
the evidence of the senses, the mind cannot think differently and new
connections cannot be opened. You will say that the past is dead, over,
finished—just because your senses do not register it. If they did, you
would think differently, but as they do not, you will say that the idea
of the past life actually existing is nonsense. That is what it is. It is
"nonsense", for the external senses do not register it, since they can
only register the moment of Time called the present. The higher
dimensions are not realities of the external senses, but of the internal
senses. For instance, my whole life can be internally seen in a certain
state of consciousness. Why? Because it is there. Where? In Time.
And my future? It is also there, in the dimension that we experience
as Time through which we are moving. Then I am pre-destined ? Yes
and No, because there are many parallel lines of Time like telegraph
wires and one can be on one or another according to one's inner state.
If you enjoy your negative emotions you will follow one line, and the
lowest. To rise in a vertical movement one rises and follows another
parallel line by non-identifying and by Self-Remembering—in short,
by the Work, which enters Time at right angles and so is always
vertically above you, whatever line you follow, and never in the future,
for the future is in horizontal Time. One might speak of one's vertical
future, however, as distinct from one's horizontal future. If Being
develops, the direction is vertical. One will see one's life differently.
Higher Being is above lower Being. At this moment you can go with
'I's below you or above you. You can spoil something silently in
yourself or not. You can say something to yourself or not. It will all
remain in the Time-Body, but on different levels, according to its
quality. All the life is there—in the Time-Body. But by work now,
things can be changed in the past and the Time-Body connected in a
different way—as one might loop up bits of a long, flexible string and
lengthen others. When we feel that all the past is there and living in
the dimension of living Time, our sense of ourselves alters. Indeed, it
alters very much, by our realizing first that passing Time cancels
nothing and secondly that one can change things in the past now—not
by useless sad regret, but by active work on ourselves. We are not
connected with a dead past but with a living past. Every act of work
vibrates through the whole Time-Body and alters things in it. I can
946
act now on my past. I can change now my behaviour thirty years ago.
Later on, we will speak of recurrence, of re-entering our lives once
more and finding perhaps that some things have been changed, so that
we begin to awaken earlier.
Great Amwell House, October 5, 1946
FURTHER NOTE ON TIME-BODY
In the previous paper it was said that the feeling of Eternity enters
into Self-Remembering but not into self-observation. We observe ourselves in passing Time. We observe Personality which has been formed
in passing Time by the action of life. We observe the different 'I's
in it which have appeared at different periods of Time, chiefly through
imitation. Essence is not of passing Time. It is not a temporal thing.
In remembering oneself one does not remember the Personality but
something prior to it that lies in the direction of Essence and can only
be reached through it. To remember oneself in the Personality would
be to strengthen it—to say "This is I" to it instead of "This is not I".
If you say 'I' to the wrong thing you increase its power over you. You
do not then separate from it. Life makes us identify with the Personality. It naturally makes us identify with what it has itself created
in us. The Work is to make us cease to identify with what life has
created in us and is now doing to us. To remember oneself, to summon
up the purest, subtlest feeling of 'I' in connection with some prominent
side of Personality would be to identify still more with what life has
formed round Essence. It would be like washing paint off with paint.
The purest, subtlest, most luminous and total feeling of 'I' lies behind
the multiple feeling of Personality and its uproar of ambitions, anxiety,
violence and negativeness. Into this feeling of 'I' of which I speak the
feeling of Eternity enters every moment of Time, but in a direction we
can never find as long as we are identified wholly with the Personality.
While the Personality is wholly active, the direction is closed. Personality directs us to Time—to passing Time—that is, Life. Diagrammatically, the dimension of Eternity enters the dimension of Time at right
angles. As the feeling of Time increases by self-observation and we
begin to take time-photographs of ourselves—that is, studies of 'I's over
long periods—the hypnotism of the present moment registered by the
senses becomes lessened. The "present" is no longer confined to the
instant—but broadens gradually into all one's life, as consciousness
expands. We begin, in fact, to understand living Time—that is, we
begin to understand that our lives lie in the invisible dimension of Time
and are not confined to the snapshots of Time that our senses register.
The past is living in its own present—and is changing. How can it be
947
changing? Through reaching our consciousness. Consciousness is light:
light changes everything. Shut in the prison of the senses we disbelieve
in dimensions other than those of space which the senses shew us. How,
if we believe only in what we can see, can we ever develop? How can
we touch centres that are supra-sensible? How can we undergo change
of mind—the first step in the development that esotericism teaches as
being a man's meaning? If you believe there is nothing behind the
scenes of visible life and that Nature created itself, how can you
remember yourself? If you believe you are your visible body and that
you cease with it, how can you remember yourself? When this Work
says Essence comes down from the Stars it says something that can alter
your life. The source of Essence is vertical to Time. Our origin is not
in Time—in the past. This is a strange idea. But it is an idea that is
necessary. It changes the mind and this is the first thing necessary. We
begin to think in a new way—and how much there is to think about in
a new way—and reach back to, in one's life, and change. One can
see one's life quite differently—but not if one does not understand that
it is living and is affected by all we do now and understand now. New
understanding is the most powerful force we can create in the Work.
It comes from new ideas. This force of new understanding not only
alters the future but it alters the past. The whole Time-Body of a
person is connected, just as one end of a stick is connected with the
other. Tap it anywhere and it vibrates through its length. But the
Time-Body is not straight. It is a circle, not quite closed.
This brings us to recurrence. The teaching is that if we do not
"work" on ourselves the life recurs just as before. Nothing is altered.
Why? Because we have not altered anything in ourselves. What does
it mean to alter something in oneself? It means a growth of Essence.
If Essence grows it will not attract the same life in recurrence. In the
Work by the term "development" is meant a new growth of Essence.
This can only take place by some manifestation of Personality ceasing
to be active through the power of the Work. A man sees, through the
light of the Work and his understanding of it, some negative manifestations of himself, let us say. By further observation he sees it more
and more fully, extending through his life. Wishing to work on himself
—that is, valuing the Work practically and not sentimentally—he
begins to separate from it, in, so to speak, cold blood—deliberately.
When he feels himself near the 'I's that lead into it, into this bad
psychological place in himself, he does not identify with these negative
'I's in this place that always exists. If he finds that he is tending to get
too close to them he remembers himself and when he feels the Work
—that is, when he is in the presence of the Work-'I's—he recalls the
observations he has made hitherto on this negative state and the
moments of insight into it that he has had and what he has understood
of the meaning of the Work and why he himself is working. In this
way he strengthens his aim. He has given himself the First Conscious
Shock and so created new hydrogens, new force. With this new force
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which he has created his power of not identifying is increased.
Now work of this kind, which is against one or other manifestation
of the Personality, produces the right conditions for the growth of
Essence. A struggle must necessarily take place at every stage of this
growth. If Personality wins then there is no growth. Personality and
self-will absorb the force and remain active and Essence gets nothing
and so remains passive. So we must be tempted. One prays not to be led
into temptation but delivered from evil, from Personality. Here we
must think individually. The struggle is between what is unreal and
what is real. But in this struggle it is only the light of the Work—that
is, the force and illumination coming from Conscious Man in the form
of esoteric teaching, as is the Work we study—that can separate you
from Personality. This force is counter to the force of life. It sets up
war in the man. But otherwise Essence cannot become active. Life
made and keeps Personality active. The Work is to make Personality
passive by the methods of the 4th Way so that Essence can grow and
eventually become stronger than Personality, so that a man is no longer
worked from outside—from life. This means the emergence of a new
man, a new woman. This is the development meant—not an increase
of what you are but the emergence of another new person, by making
what you are now passive, along those lines taught so clearly by the
Work. If Essence grows after Personality has been formed, it will not
attract the same life in recurrence. But unless a man has another light
than that of the visible Sun he will not be able to make Personality
passive. He will not understand what it means. If he meets some
pseudo-teaching his efforts will only increase Personality and he will
remain on the wheel of mechanical recurrence.
You will understand therefore why it is said that a man with right
Magnetic Centre is already at a far higher level of Being than others,
however prominent, or scientific, and so on, who are without it and can
only believe in their senses. The point of entry into esoteric teaching is
the Magnetic Centre which can distinguish between things of life—that
is, A influences—and things of Conscious Humanity—that is, B influences. Without this point of entry a man cannot separate himself
from Personality because the force of life will hold him to it. The
development of Essence will then be impossible. The man lives and
dies a seed, an acorn, and the Work says he can be eaten by pigs, a
painful business. He forms a source of food for what is beneath the
Earth. A man into whom knowledge from Higher Man has entered,
who begins to understand and to realize what he is, and eventually sees
his own nothingness, who begins to work, this man can make Personality
passive. That is, the Work makes it passive if he is of use. In that man
there will be a growth of Essence. He will not go round in the same
circle of life. If the development of Essence becomes full, if the essential
man grows to his full stature—he will no longer experience life at the
level of this Earth. It is that level called the Sun that demands the life
of Man as well as the Earth and Moon. The Sun demands the developed
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organism—Conscious Man. So Man was created a self-developing
organism and given an Essence that came from the level of the Starry
Galaxy.
Great Amwell House, October 13, 1946
THE RELATION OF MEMORY TO THE
FOURTH DIMENSION
Our memory is stored in rolls in centres. Impressions fall on rolls
in centres. These are set turning by associations. When we are
reminded of something it means that a roll has started turning in some
part of a centre. Sometimes a roll just starts and stops again and we
almost remember—a curious but common state. Sometimes more than
one roll turns. When this happens the memory is much richer. When
rolls are set turning simultaneously in three centres—let us say, in the
Intellectual, the Emotional and the Instinctive Centres—the recollection has something of the quality of reality. But smell can almost turn
the past into the present. The fine matters of smell touch the Fourth
Dimension, of which we have recently been speaking.
Now my memory, say, of Paris is stored in rolls in centres. The
memory of it is different in each centre, for each centre has a separate
kind of memory. The impressions stored in the Instinctive Centre recall,
say, its food and wine or its comfortable beds. The impressions stored
in the Emotional Centre recall, say, its beauty in early sunlight. The
impressions stored in the Moving Centre recall, say, athletic feats in
crossing Paris streets. The impressions stored in the Intellectual Centre
recall, say, the bookstalls by the river or thoughts about Notre Dame,
and so on. All these impressions and a million and one others stored
in rolls in different centres form my memory of Paris. Sometimes
a Paris roll is set going by some accidental association and a bit of
Paris appears in consciousness for a moment and perhaps some other
rolls turn a little and I have a dim sense of other bits of Paris. This
machinery of rolls lies in the brain. The brain is a machine enclosed
in a box. If we knew enough and could look into the box and into the
machine within it with much finer senses, that we possess but do not
use, we could see these rolls turning. If another knew how to connect
his machine with my machine he could know Paris through me and
see what I saw. It would also be possible for him to observe an idea
entering into my brain in one way and into another person's brain in a
different way and he would then understand why we never agreed about
anything and always remembered differently and were continually
quarrelling. The brain is a small machine with a very high storage
capacity and millions of wires connecting different parts of it. It is
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much the same in everyone, but the connections used are different in
different people. When you judge another person it is certain connections you judge used by him, that do not correspond with the
connections used by you. So one realizes that one's past also lies not
only in rolls in centres but in the connections acquired by upbringing
between these millions of wires that are now habitually used—that is,
the paths in the brain that we always walk along. Among millions of
other possible paths, our past, then, is one form, one possibility, one
pattern, and one set of streets in a vast town. Now you see what is
meant when it is said in this teaching that Time for us is the fulfilment
of one line of possibilities but that at every moment there are lines
branching out in every direction and so infinite possibilities, and that
Eternity is the fulfilment of all possibilities. You remember one
definition that Christ gave of God—that with God all things are
possible. God is not in Time but in Eternity, outside Time, having
nothing to do with Time. That is why, in order to understand aright
what is above us, we have to get rid of Time in our thoughts. We have
to get away from Time altogether in order to reach a level of ourselves
that is above us. Time and space prevent us from reaching a possible
and actually existing higher level of ourselves. A man must be re-born
out of Time and Space—for his mind, if awakened, can understand
and reach to a higher dimensional world in which there is no Time
and all is—not was. That is why we have to start with the realization
that all our life lies living in the invisible 4th Dimension and that
the past is living. The past is—not was—and so can be changed. I can
change my past by working on myself now. You can change the past as well
as the future now if you remember yourself and cease identifying with
a typical path that you usually follow as, say, in judging others. So
what we do now in order to gain new knowledge so as to understand
how to think in a new way—by making new connections, for that is
the start of all change of Being—is truly important. Among other
things you begin to think in a new way if you think of passing time as
an illusion. What is the reason of this illusion? One reason is due to
these rolls in centres of which we were speaking, apart from what was
said earlier. When they turn they give the sensation of the past, of
what was, and so we think of the past as non-existent, dead, and
irremediable, and from that derive an entirely wrong feeling of ourselves—yes, from that and a hundred other things. Rolls are necessary
—otherwise we would have no memory. But memory is not new
meaning, new inspiration. It is not the same as consciousness in the
4th Dimension which is sometimes experienced when the carbon
dioxide in the blood reaches a certain concentration. Then there can
be direct access to the 4th Dimension of Time. A certain kind of
breathing can result in this. It is then like going to Paris, instead of
remembering about it. Paris, is, not was. If you could see rightly into
a person's brain, you could see, say, an illness coming. The brain is
strung on to Time like a ring sliding along a rope. It is a machine
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passing through Time—through one of the possible lines of Time—
and there is left in it a slight deposit on these rolls. This is memory.
Memory is slight. We remember very little. We mis-remember or
forget nearly everything. But in the 4th Dimension itself, apart from
memory, all our life stands just as it was in every detail of thought,
feeling, sensation, movement, perception and action. At death all the
life together—the entirety of the life—forms a certain kind of food and
according to its quality it is absorbed either by what lies below the
Earth in scale of creation—namely, the Moon—or by a higher level—
namely, the Sun. So we are not our bodies, but all that is laid down in
our lives apart from memory. We are our total lives from birth to death.
This is our Time-Body. It is all present, all there; and if I work on
myself now, observe myself, see where I am identified, see what accounts
I am making against others, how I justify myself and forgive no one,
how I think only how others are wrong, how I judge people mechanically without seeing into their lives or seeing how self-satisfied and
complacent I am, how I am not at all what I imagine—in fact, if I
begin to work on myself from the esoteric ideas of this Work which
seek to transform us, then I may be able to change my Time-Body by
getting on to another level of Time, on to another line where everything
in the past is altered—so that when I re-enter my life at the moment of
birth I find things are -different and even remember my previous
recurrence, possessed perhaps of a strange feeling of familiarity—of
having been there before. This is because when real memory is opened,
at death, when the book of our life is opened—not only what others did
is recorded, but your own smugness, your own meritoriousness, your
own cruelties and dislikes, what you did, what you felt, and thought,
are also recorded. This is too strong medicine to bear, save by long,
sincere, uncritical self-observation. So instead of such a powerful degree
of direct consciousness we are mercifully given memory on rolls and
are not allowed to have access to real memory, which only Conscious
Man can bear and has. We, as mechanical people, groping in the dark,
could not bear such an intense light. Gradually, however, by work on
oneself, this range of consciousness increases, and with it our Personalities
begin to lose power—and Essence begins to develop.
You can catch perhaps a glimpse of what I am speaking of—namely,
how little we can trust to the memory deposits on rolls in centres. If
people only realized that what they call absolutely certain memory is
not certain and that, in fact, they cannot trust memory on rolls in
centres and that what they are sure happened did not happen as they
remember—it would lead to a freeing of themselves from the brainmachinery and as a result a loosening of everything in them and a new
feeling of themselves. This Work, from many different angles of
approach, is to free a man, a woman, from their habitual, rigid, set
feeling of themselves, and eventually create a new sense of 'I', a new
feeling of oneself. How many evil accounts against others, how many
bitter grievances, are kept alive against others on the basis of this faulty
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memory on rolls, which, if we could experience real contact with the
Time-Dimension, would utterly vanish. But few are yet prepared
enough by the Work to begin to see and bear what really happened.
If we had real memory we could never have negative emotions against
others. But as we are we have to begin the other way round—that is,
to notice and separate from our negative emotions. This is called
"preparation of lower centres for the reception of higher centres."
Higher centres work in higher dimensions. They embrace the whole
life.
Great Amwell House, October 19, 1946
A NOTE ON PERSONAL WORK ON ONESELF
When we are identified we do not remember ourselves. In the
method and practice of the 4th Way the attainment of the 3rd
State or level of Consciousness is made a central theme. SelfRemembering, Self-Consciousness and Self-Awareness are some of the
characteristics of the 3rd State of Consciousness. I would add as a
commentary Self-Recognition or recognizing oneself. When we identify
we drop to the second level of Consciousness. What results ? A number
of related things then result. We fall asleep. We come under the Law
of Accident. We serve Nature and the influences created by life—
namely, A influences. We are under the power of whatever we identify
with and lose force to it. The inner work of the organism is altered.
We forget our aim. Consciousness contracts. Our associations receive
energy and former things return. All this and much more results from
identifying. Viewed on a great scale in the light of the Ray of Creation
and the Side-Octave from the Sun, when we identify we shut ourselves
to influences coming down from a higher level and open ourselves to
those coming from beneath us. That is, we feed the Moon. The more
we identify the more we feed the Moon. A person who enjoys negative
emotions is an example. Identifying is dirt. Has the vision of the world
being filled with useless suffering—that is, useless to any development
—yet come to you in internal experience? Yet useless suffering is useful
for something else, for everything is useful to something or for something. At different levels everything is used. If a man makes no effort
to awaken, what energy he has for awakening will be used elsewhere.
It will be given to others. Christ said: "Unto everyone that hath shall
be given, and he shall have abundance, but from him that hath not,
even that which he hath shall be taken away." (Matt. XXV 29.)
Nothing is wasted, although to us it looks as if it were. Everything is
"food" for something else. The useless sufferings of mankind and ail
its identifyings form food. They are collected from the sensitive film
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surrounding the Earth and transmitted to the Moon. So we realize
that a man in a state of Self-Remembering and a man in a state of sleep
are two quite different people although they may be sitting next each
other. They are not sitting next each other in the vertical scale of
Being. Psychologically they are separated by an immense distance—
not a distance in space but a distance in Being. When people identify
with everything, both with themselves and with life, they do not
understand the Work. Let us take identifying with oneself. Oneself is
a multiplicity of different 'I's. When a person identifies with every 'I'
that comes round in the turning circle of 'I's, he is not working on
himself. This thing we refer to as "ourselves" is exactly what we have
to observe. It is a series of 'I's that successively take charge of us, and
to which we always say 'I'. By saying 'I', by thinking it is always oneself
and so taking oneself as one self, we are continually identified, continually
asleep.
How and in what way does the fine edge of the Work enter, so that
all this mechanical state of things begins to be altered ? By realizing
through directed observation that one is not one person but many
different people. One is not "oneself" but "many selves". Some may
say that this has been often said before. Yes, and it will often be said
again. Why? Because unless we are constantly reminded of it we
completely forget where the practical work on ourselves starts from.
It starts from separating from certain kinds of 'I's. Can you hear what
is being said? Work on oneself starts from separating from certain
kinds of 'I's. But how can you begin to separate from the power of any
'I' unless you observe it in action ? In the Work the object of observing
oneself is to become aware of certain kinds of 'I's that feed the Moon
and then to go with them less and less—that is, to identify with them
less and less—not take them as 'I'—that is, to separate from them. Here
the starting-point of the Work lies. Unless you have come to this
realization, the Work and its meaning remain obscure to you. You do
not grasp what it is about. You remain negative, distressed, unhappy,
miserable. You can see no connection between what the Work teaches
and your own states. You believe every state of yourself. You believe
every 'I' that momentarily takes charge of you—that is, you identify
with everything in yourself. You do not grasp where the secret of the
Work lies—namely, in not taking too much notice of and not identifying
with your negativeness, your distress, your unhappiness, your miserableness. You need not identify with them, need not consent to them, need
not say "I am negative", for they are 'I's that love to destroy you, that
love to poison you.
As was said, when you identify, you are asleep. Negative 'I's wish
to keep you asleep, for when you are awake they have no power over
you. People say: "Oh, that may be true, but I have a very good reason
for being negative." In this way, negative 'I's continue to have full
sway. They provide the reasons. The Work says that all negative
states, no matter what the cause of them may be, are wrong, and must
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be separated from. Try to ignore the cause. We have, the Work says,
a right not to be negative and we must fight with all our strength of
mind and through the truth of the Work for this right which is ours
and which we lost by imitating others. Must you take things in the
same mechanical way ? If you do not see how else you can take them,
then again you do not see where work on yourself lies. Put it in this
way—must we always behave mechanically ? Is it not possible to behave
more consciously to life, to ourselves and to others. What does that
mean? It means we know already by self-observation how we
take an event, a situation, a person, mechanically, and that we do not
identify with this typical mechanical way of taking them but (1) separate
from it and (2) if possible consciously try to find a new way of taking
them. This is work on oneself and this leads to change of Being—to
new Being. There is plenty of new Being, so to walk in old Being is
unnecessary. But we are jealous of old Being and do not wish to have
new Being—or rather, we wish to have new Being and retain old Being.
But we cannot go to Paris and remain in London.
Now to return to this open secret that the Work is always teaching
us and we take so long to see. If you say "I am negative" you cannot
separate. If you see the 'I' that is producing a poison gas of negative
emotion then you can say "This is not I". Again, you should not say
"Need I take the event in this way?" The point lies in observing that
an 'I' in you is taking it that way and you are identified with that 'I'
and need not be. So you step back from that 'I'—separate from it—
and standing behind it watch it taking the event in that way. So
gradually you step behind the Personality-Machine and see it as a cage
of 'I's and no longer as you. You begin to strip it off like a lot of coats.
Then Steward comes to prepare the house for Real 'I'.
Great Amwell House, October 26, 1946
ESSENCE AND PERSONALITY
To-night we speak again about Personality and Essence because all
self-observation leads into that question anew at different stages—
"What in me is Essence? What is Personality?" It might be said that
Personality is the grown-up side and Essence the ungrown side of
ourselves. The point however is that the grown-up side is not really
ourselves. It fits like a tight costume round us but can under certain
circumstances be stripped off. The real person then appears, quite
unlike what the Personality made him appear to himself and to others.
Why is so much said in this Work about the necessity for Essence to
grow? Essence cannot be stripped off. The real person, the person that
remains after Personality is removed, is the Essence. A person may
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have a noble Personality. But this is not the real person. When the
safeguards and restraining influences of life are removed and all fear
of exposure or loss of reputation or the consequences of the law are
done away with, what lies behind this noble Personality emerges. That
is, ungrown, undeveloped Essence appears. We must not imagine that
Essence is wholly beautiful and charming. The real man appears
separated from the Personality that has surrounded him hitherto.
People do not understand how, if certain outer restraints and fears were
removed, they would not lead the careful lives they do. They do not
understand that their behaviour is not from within, but is caused by
external circumstances. That is, they do not see that Personality is
active, but not Essence. Now we know that Essence manifests itself
openly and uncovered until about three or four years of age. Then
Personality begins to surround Essence, masking it, and takes charge.
Personality is formed by imitation and education, by praise, by fear of
consequences. But it is not the individual himself. The real person—
the Essence—remains covered over and passive. Now whatever is done
by Personality is done through the force of external circumstances.
That is, it is done from without, not from within. In this sense it is
unreal—not the real person. Let me repeat: "What is done through
Personality is done through the force of external circumstances." That
is, life drives the machine of Personality. External circumstances make
you act as you do. You may imagine you are free. But you are not free.
Whatever you do is due to external circumstances acting on your
particular kind of acquired Personality. Notice how external circumstances put people in great or small positions. It is not them. It is the
force of external circumstances. All the time we say 'I' to what we do,
as if we were doing it. We do not suspect, save through genuine selfobservation, that it is external circumstances acting on Personality that
make us do as we do. It is not I from within doing it. Ordinarily, what
you think is really your 'I' is only a collection of 'I's in the Personality
that are for the moment in agreement responding to outside impressions
—that is, responding to external circumstances.
Let us go back to what was said—namely, that what you do is not
from Essence but from Personality. Now suppose in some way you
could act only from undeveloped Essence; it would be foolish, even not
human. So here lies the paradox of Personality and Essence. To be
able to act from Essence requires a development of Essence. The Work
teaches that the first step to bring about the development of Essence is
the formation of Personality. It then says that for Essence to grow,
Personality must become passive. To say that Personality must teach
Essence is one way of putting it—a way I have always thought a wrong
way of putting it. I would rather say Essence must learn from Personality. The esoteric problem—the task of the Work—is how to make
Essence grow. It does not grow from itself save to a point. Something
else is necessary. This is the central idea and explains why esoteric
teaching—religions, and, in fact, all B influences exist. How to make
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Essence grow is the real esoteric problem—how to make the real grow
in us so that there is no duality of acquired Personality and born
Essence. The difficulty is that Essence cannot be compelled to grow.
No external compulsion can make Essence grow. You cannot compel
a small child to grow essentially. Why? Because each child is a selfdeveloping brganism by creation. That is, it can only develop itself.
Since Essence cannot be persuaded directly, by outside force, Personality is formed round Essence. This is the first step in the scheme for
Man on Earth, coming down from the Sun-Octave. The trouble is that
Man stops at that point—namely, he has a Personality formed for him
and then identifies with it and takes it as 'I'—as himself. For this reason
he suffers from inner disharmonies all his life. He does not know he is
half-formed. For this acquired Personality may give no outlet to
Essence. A very strict upbringing means a very tight, rigid Personality
and so the making of Personality more passive becomes a formidable
problem. Yet the point remains that, unless Essence grows, the man is
a failure esoterically. He is perhaps a very good man—but mechanically
so. He is not really a good man but an acquired imitation of one. The
mechanically good and the mechanically bad are therefore seen as the
same in the light of this Work. Only understanding can make Essence
grow and this can only enter a man through new knowledge that comes
in first through the Personality. So Essence can only grow through new
knowledge—a special knowledge that is, in short, esoteric teaching.
And this must first come in via the Personality—from outside—from
peculiar external circumstances. The Personality transmits it. It means
the death of Personality eventually. But Personality does not know this.
The new knowledge has a force behind it not derived from life. Mr.
Ouspensky used to repeat again and again that it is impossible to escape
from Personality and buffers save through a special force and that we
have not this force ourselves. We have to get in contact with this force.
Then Personality can gradually become passive when it must, so that
Essence can grow. Then it becomes a matter whether you wish to follow
understanding or not. Essence is lazy—like all primitive peoples.
Laziness is a very deep powerful thing. That is why the Work says that
once you really understand why a thing is wrong and still do it, you in a
real sense sin—that is, miss the mark. In connection with Essence, Mr.
Ouspensky once said that, from the standpoint of the astral or planetary
world, Essence is often more or less like an animal, and that essentially
there are very few human beings at this level. He said that Humanity
scarcely exists at a higher level—when stripped of all pretence and quite
naked. Now if we do not steal, from ourselves, no matter what the
circumstances, it is essential. If I do a thing because no one is looking,
or I wish a reward or praise, or from fear, it is not from within, but from
outside—that is, from external circumstances, from Personality. It is
not real. When stripped of external life what will I be—when
Personality is removed? What remains that is real? I advise you all
to think about this problem that arises from the fact that Man is created
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to be a self-developing organism. You will see how all external compulsion and social systems of that kind will never develop Man and
will, in fact, separate him from Essence completely. All the long process
and living of the Work is to pass from Personality to Essence, bringing
to Essence the gifts Personality has acquired. Sooner or later, somehow
or other, somewhere or other, we are unmasked, and Essence is revealed
as ourselves. Do you recollect the masked balls of a former age? At
midnight we had to unmask.
Great Amwell House, November 2, 1946
A NOTE ON BURIED CONSCIENCE
This Work is about reaching a higher level called the Third State
of Consciousness. This level exists in us as a possibility. The second
level of Consciousness, the level of so-called waking Consciousness, in
which we spend our lives, is a level below the third level. All forms of
thought, all emotional reactions, all feelings of oneself, the way one
takes things ordinarily, belong to the second level. We seek to reach
the third level. About what can we be quite sure? We can be quite
sure that at the third level the way of thinking and feeling, the sense of
what is important and unimportant, will be utterly different. Another
order will be reached. The third level is experienced by many during
their life-time as a flash, a momentary experience. They are for the
moment without any time-feeling, and so without any sense of identifying. Troubles, cares, anxieties, all their sources of being identified, lie
far below them. But these moments are not enough. They merely
indicate something possible to reach. Work is about separating from
everything that does not belong to this third level, which is our real
aim. People say: "Why should I work?" Or they say: "What does
this Work mean?" This Work is based on real knowledge which concerns how the attainment of this third level is possible. For example,
why should you not identify fully with everything? The answer is that
if you do, you will get nothing from the Work. You serve yourself as
you are; you serve life; you serve nature. Therefore you are used by
the cosmic forces that seek to keep you asleep. Now a person may say:
"I will not serve this cosmic purpose. I will not give way to useless
suffering. I will not identify myself with negative emotions. I will
become conscious." But he can do nothing by himself. In the first
place, new knowledge must be given to him, and in the second place,
when trials come, as they always must, at certain periods, he must
use them practically—that is, he must really be able to think in a
new way about his trials. New knowledge cannot be put into old
bottles—that is, into the old mind. Understand that a higher level of
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Consciousness means another way of thinking, not the old way stepped
up. The freeing of the mind from its old habitual ways of thinking,
the freeing of oneself from one's old mind and its ways of thinking,
the freeing of oneself from one's habitual emotions, takes place by stages
—often at long intervals. It is comparable to climbing a stair, each step
exhausting one's energy for the time being. Each person is given his
own octave or staircase of development and what may be easy for one
person is not necessarily so for another. But the sum-total, the quantity
of effort necessary for reaching internal freedom, is the same for everyone. No one is better off than another person. To be given advantages,
for example, will not help in the long run. Just where you have been
helped will become eventually the most difficult place where you have
to help yourself. And here you must remember two things—namely,
the esoteric saying that the more you are given the more is required
of you and that if you are told things beforehand that you should have
found out for yourself by observation, you may think it is a help—as,
for instance, being told your Chief Feature before you have even caught
a glimpse of it—but it is not a help. Actually, it will make things far
more difficult. It interrupts a gradual inner process of unfolding, of
seeing things for yourself and seeing for yourself how something in you
is wrong and hinders you. You may be sure that once your evaluation
of the Work is strong enough and you hear it enough and reflect upon
it enough, you will see gradually unfolding the mystery of your own
development. This mystery is different in each person. That is why it
is so important not to compare yourself with other people. A great deal
of negative emotion arises from comparison. Remember always that
the Work is equally difficult for everyone and that it does not become
easier. It is always difficult. And yet it is not too difficult if one will
remember enough and maintain a certain inner strength of will in
regard to it. The greatest force that we can create in the Work is
understanding. A man must build his inner Work on himself up on
the affirmation of the moments of understanding that he has had and
not let himself be shaken too much by outer events, whether in the
Work or in life, that seem to contradict what he understands himself.
In no other way can the individual development take place. A person's
understanding is his own growth of understanding and cannot be
borrowed. I cannot borrow someone else's understanding but I may
borrow his knowledge and through applying it to my being come to a
new understanding, and yet his understanding and my understanding
are two different things. They are both unique, individual. For
example, I cannot borrow my teacher's understanding but he gives me
knowledge through which, when I apply it to my being, my own understanding grows. Remember that a growth of understanding can only
come when new knowledge is applied to your own being. Knowledge
and being together constitute our level of understanding. It would be
no good my trying to imitate what my teacher does. That would be
external imitation and would become part of the False Personality.
959
For example, if my teacher does not express negative emotion and I
imitate him, I understand nothing about negative emotion. My imitation is external. But if receiving knowledge from my teacher that I
must work on the negative part of my Emotional Centre and that in
order to do this I must observe my negative emotions uncritically and
fight not to identify with them and see the reason why for myself, then
I may also begin not to express negative emotion just as my teacher
does not. But this would no longer be from imitation. It would be
from myself, from the growth of my own understanding, from the same
experience as my teacher underwent.
In this Work we are taught to work on the Intellectual Centre and
on the Emotional Centre first of all. To begin with, we must work on
the Intellectual Centre by taking in a new supply of ideas and arranging
them in our minds so that we begin to think in a new way about everything. This alters connections in our minds. If the ideas of the Work
do not influence our thinking at all, if we never really think from the
ideas of the Work about ourselves, about other people, or about life,
we will then be always following our habitual minds, our habits of
thought. The first place that has to be altered in order to undergo a
change of being is the mind itself. That is, the way we think. When
we observe the Intellectual Centre, we observe our thoughts and notice
how we say 'I' to our thoughts; but these habitual thoughts must be
seen as habitual thoughts, as machinery. For example, need you think
in this way that you are doing at present? This is the first challenge
that you have to make to yourself if you want to change. Need you
think in the way you are thinking at this moment? Challenge the
thought. The thought is automatic. Did you go with it? Did you
identify with it? Bring the Work up into your mind and try to see
whether the Work teaches you to think in this way. Try to bring the
system of thoughts, of ideas, that the Work teaches as knowledge to us,
into your previous form of thinking about yourself or your habitual
way of thinking about other people, or your habitual way of thinking
about life. If you cannot do this, it means that you are identified with
your mechanical thinking which you have got haphazard from your
upbringing. Are you sure that all these thoughts that you have gained
from your upbringing are of any use at all?
Now to think from the ideas of the Work requires an effort of internal
attention. This Work is to make us think in a new way. That is why
you have to be reminded so often and for such a long time about what
the Work teaches in order that eventually something takes place in you,
something quite definite and difficult to define, when you no longer
think habitually, but begin to think from what the Work has been saying
to you for years. When this happens, the Work is born in your mind
and you undergo a change of mind. A new set of ideas, a new set of
associations, is formed in the mental part of you. Then a long struggle
takes place between your ordinary thinking and Work-thinking. It is
as if the brain itself had to be altered in all its connections and re-framed
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and re-connected on the basis of the knowledge of the Work. We think
from such knowledge as we have. But this Work is new knowledge and
we have to begin to think eventually from this new knowledge about
ourselves—and that is a great subject—and finally about life and what
it means—and that again is a great subject. Once the new thinking
coming from knowledge of the Work begins to connect itself with our
minds we have moments in which we see things and understand things
in a completely different way from what we usually do. Then we fall
asleep and think in the ordinary way—that is, we are subject to
oscillations, often very violent. Now if we were always in the Third State
of Consciousness we should always think from the knowledge of the
Work. This would govern us and everything would be quite easy then.
We might simply withdraw into this new kind of thinking and meditate
on it, as happens in some forms of Yoga. But the trouble is that we
also have an Emotional Centre which for a long time does not obey our
thoughts and so it is necessary to work at the same time on the Emotional
Centre in connection with the new knowledge of the Work, and the
first thing that is emphasized is that we must work on our negative
emotions. Why should we work on our negative emotions? This is a
very good question to ask oneself in all inner sincerity, and here the
mind will help if the strength of the Work-ideas is beginning to form
a new mind which has a small will of its own. The Emotional Centre
is the seat of our ordinary will as it is and the negative part of the
Emotional Centre is especially so. The small Will from the change in
Mental Centre is not sufficient to control the will of the unredeemed
Emotional Centre for a long time. The will of the negative part of the
Emotional Centre coupled with the will of the physical body forms a
very powerful antagonist to the Will that is formed through the Work
in the emotional part of the Intellectual Centre. But although we
witness constantly our complete failure in controlling our negative
emotions, or, let us add, the will of the body, yet if the relationship to the
Work and the valuation of its ideas are strong enough, there remains
always in spite of constant defeats something in the background which
does not consent to all that is going on. I do not think I have mentioned
here, in connection with what the Work says that the knowledge of
the Work must become emotional, that the first place in which it can
become emotional is in the emotional part of the Intellectual Centre.
As I said, it is here that the new Will of the Work is formed first of all.
The problem then is the negative part of the Emotional Centre itself
in which exist 'I's that are very powerful and do everything they can
to fight every form of belief that we possess in regard to this Work.
Now if we had not got Buried Conscience the situation would be hopeless.
The negative 'I's in the Emotional Centre would always have the
victory. The secret is however that in the Emotional Centre there is
Buried Conscience and this is awakened by the emotional part of the
Intellectual Centre when the ideas of the Work have entered the mind
and become emotionally felt—not only as what is Truth but as what is
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Good. This awakens the Buried Conscience in the Emotional Centre
itself. The Work teaches that Buried Conscience exists in everyone,
quite apart from acquired Conscience, which is a matter of local
upbringing. But for this Buried Conscience and the awakening of it
in the Emotional Centre through the new mind and its new Will, we
should indeed be in a hopeless position. But fortunately, as it is, every
emotional perception of the truth of the Work coming from the
Intellectual Centre arouses this Buried Conscience in the Emotional
Centre and then the Emotional Centre itself fights against its negative
emotions.
Now if you do not keep the Work strong in your mind and renew
it continually at least once a day, or at least often, if you do not rearrange everything in your mind at intervals so that you are thinking
from the channels of the Work and their connections, this awakening
of the Buried Conscience begins to cease and then you find yourself
alone. When you feel alone like this, you must think of the Work,
as, for example, go over what was said at the last meeting and refresh
your mind with it. This is a form of Self-Remembering in a practical
way and it will send a current of force to Buried Conscience in the
Emotional Centre which alone can cast out your devils. It is not as if
you do it, nor must you think that you can do it, but if you do what
you can do, then something will help you which is not you and which
you must never ascribe to yourself. We get into a bad state often because
we ascribe everything to ourselves, just as we ascribe our merit to
ourselves, just as we ascribe our good to ourselves, which means of
course that we inevitably ascribe our evil to ourselves. One must
ascribe neither good nor evil to oneself—otherwise one stands in the
way of one's development. The Work is an instrument first of all—a
mental instrument—which must be used to put our thoughts in the
right order, to get things straight, and if we do this with the memory of
our past experience in the Work, this effort to re-arrange internally will
stimulate this Buried Conscience in the Emotional Centre which can
fight all negative emotions and cast out every devil in us. You cannot
overcome a negative emotion directly. It will only get stronger as a
rule. But you can through your mind, through arranging the Work in
your mind, touch the emotional part of the Intellectual Centre,
which in turn awakens the Buried Conscience which will attack by
itself the negative emotions. The power of Buried Conscience derives
from the Higher Emotional Centre. You must remember that the
Work teaches that Man was once in touch with Higher Centres but
went to sleep. He once knew what to do directly but now, in this state
of sleep, he can only get to where he was by indirect methods. All that
is left now is change of mind. Change of mind starts the whole possible
recovery. That is why Christ taught always μετάνοια change of mind,
as the first thing—not repentance, but change of mind. Unless the mind
changes, whereby the attitudes change, everyone will always be just
as he is, whatever effort he makes in the way of starvation, self-denial,
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and so on. With the same attitude, a man will always remain the
same. As long as a man thinks in the same habitual way, he will remain
the same. The Work can actually teach a man to think in a new way,
I repeat, about himself, about others, and about the meaning of life.
With this change of mind his attitudes will inevitably change. If your
attitudes have not changed then you will not change and you can never
change. If, for example, your attitude is that you are a fully conscious
man and that you are a unity and you have a permanent Real 'I' and
an inflexible will and that you can do and so on, then these attitudes and
this way of thinking will fix you always in the same psychological place
as you are in and no new development is possible. But if your attitudes
change through new thinking, through the ideas of the Work, from
esoteric teaching, then you can change, because you will begin to
arouse Buried Conscience which cannot work in you as long as you have
all these false notions about yourself, about others, and about life, and
ascribe all to yourself. It is exactly this new thinking, this
that
the Work can give us, that when emotionally felt arouses into activity
the Buried Conscience which then begins to help. So you will see how
important it is to keep the Work mentally living in oneself not only
by constant outer reminders of it but by your own deeper inner thinking
because, as you know, this Work is a rope let down that you have to
jump to catch hold of. No doubt sometimes one need no longer jump
but as we are it is necessary to jump—that is, to make a certain kind
of effort every day to jump up to the Work. If you ask me: "What is
this effort?" I will answer that I have said in the paper what this
effort is. I will put it in reverse form: If you use the Work merely as
a means of occasional chats then you are not making this effort.
Great Amwell House, November 11, 1946
INNER CONTRADICTIONS
It is said in the Work that if a man or a woman throughout the
whole of their lives were to feel all the contradictions that are within
them, they could not live and act as calmly as they live and act now.
They would have continued friction and unrest. One of the problems
of mankind in general, and perhaps particularly of modern mankind, is
that contradictions are not realized. As a result, human psychology
remains at a low state of development, and since the development of
mankind as a whole depends entirely on the development of each
individual, it does not seem likely that any genuine development is
possible—for the present at any rate. For that reason, we cannot expect
any world-settlement. The level of being, the Work teaches, attracts
the life—that is, you attract your problems and typical situations
963
because of your level of being and if you seek to change things you must
begin by working upon and changing your own being—that is, the kind
of person you are. Then your outer problems and typical situations will
change. When you notice this is the case, you can be sure that some
changes in being have taken place. Change of being, however, is
difficult, and needs hard work and patience, and since it can be said
that mankind, again perhaps especially to-day, does not work on being,
or even disregards it, the same form of life will be attracted—or even
a worse form—and all attempts to ameliorate human existence based
on external changes will necessarily fail, since mankind remains the
same. But a single individual can change his being.
Therefore let us speak again about change of being only from the
angle of contradictions. A man's being, a woman's being, cannot
change beyond a certain point, unless contradictions are seen. To
change your being you have to begin to realize contradictions in yourself by direct, uncritical self-observation. Or, to put it the other way
round, when you begin to see contradictions, your being is altering,
perhaps owing to another line of work. The Work shews us that our
present level of being is kept where it is by very powerful factors. I
mention to-night only pictures and buffers. Pictures of ourselves prevent
us from seeing what we are like. To take one common enough sort of
picture—you have, let us say, a picture of yourself being kind, just,
self-sacrificing and full of good will. You live, or rather float, in this
rainbow-picture, in this illusion. You do not realize that you are often
cruel, selfish, unjust and sometimes full of evil will. That is, you do not
see contradictions in your being. Now in such cases you do not see your
evil but project it on to others. That is, what you do not see in yourself
you see reflected in the other person. Until you accept your evil you
will remain floating in this absurd and romantic illusion—in this
picture of yourself which has nothing to do with truth and is, in short,
composed of imagination and lies. In this state, a man's being is
prevented from development by this contradictory situation in him.
Now only truth can lead us into the light and only the light coming
from realized, accepted truth can cure us. Lies only make us more
distorted in our being, more disharmonious, and internally more ugly.
Certainly we should, after some years' work on being, practically cease
to have any active pictures of ourselves—I say, we should. If so, it
means a corresponding development of being. But when we come to
buffers the matter is more difficult. A buffer is a silent thing, comparable to a little wall intervening between two contradictory things,
both of which we can be conscious of, but only one at a time, not
simultaneously. By the action of a buffer, a person is now conscious in
what lies on one side of the buffer and then very swiftly and smoothly
is conveyed to the other side of the buffer without any shock—that is,
without any sense of contradiction. Yet these two sides, if brought
together suddenly, would appear so wholly contradictory that a violent
shock would result. So the Work says that if a man or woman were
964
continually to feel all the contradictions that are within them, they
could not act or live as calmly as they do. Actually the sudden removal
of all buffers, if it were possible, would drive a person mad. He would
lose all idea of himself.
Now I advise you not to waste too much time on discussing exactly
what a buffer is. It is too easy to get so identified with a word that
one cannot look beyond it to where it is pointing. Words—Work-words
—are sign-posts. The Work-term buffer points to the whole question of
contradictions in us—that is, to what is in consciousness at a given
moment and what is in the dark and opposite in sense and meaning to
what is in consciousness. Now an increase, an enlargement, of consciousness, which is the aim of the Work, would result evidently from
bringing the dark into the light. At the same time this would be
necessarily accompanied by an alteration in our feeling of 'I'. What
we call 'I'—our idea of 'I'—would change. If you reflect for a moment
you will see the reason why this would inevitably follow. Contradictions
keep our being where it is. Realizing contradictions through inner
work changes being. If being changes, the feeling of 'I'—of what I am
—the idea of myself—changes. Therefore I become another person and
begin no longer to recognize myself as I was. Some people take this
negatively but they are quite wrong. How can you become another
person if you still persist in being the same person? Now it is said that
whenever a buffer is seen it can never re-form—that is, when a contradiction due to a buffer disappears and both sides are accepted simultaneously a real change of being takes place. Instead of being conscious
on one side and then on another side, which is a duality, two sides come
together and form a unity. But in that case neither one side nor the
other remains the same. A third thing is made which is not Yes or No
but Yes and No. This is one of the first steps towards unity of being
because our being at present is, as it were, a duality divided into an
accepted side and an unaccepted side, into a light and dark side, or
rather, I would say, into a side which for the moment is in consciousness,
the other side being in darkness, and then into an opposite side in which
the side that was in darkness now comes into consciousness and the side
that was in consciousness now comes into darkness.
Mr. Ouspensky once represented this on the board in the following
way. He took a centre as a circle and superimposed upon it another
circle in which a section was cut out as follows:
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This superimposed circle is turning all the time and the part of the
centre or the 'I's in this particular part of the centre become conscious
only where the action lies. As a result all the rest is in darkness and
therefore we go with those 'I's which the section exposes at a given
moment. Our task is, as it were, to remove this superimposed circle so
that all 'I's can enter into consciousness at the same time if called upon.
Mr. Ouspensky said: "In ordinary life we are only conscious in a very
small part of ourselves. Real Consciousness is being aware of everything
together." And, quoting Mr. Gurdjieff, he said: "Real Consciousness
is a state in which a man knows all at once everything that he in general
knows and only in this state can he see how little he knows and how so
many contradictions lie in what he knows."
Now Conscience, Real Conscience, which at present is buried in
us, is to feel everything together. And this Conscience is very necessary
in making relationships with people in the Work. To make relationships
in the Work means to be able to feel everything together, both the bad
sides and the good sides of a person. Real Consciousness is to know
everything together.
Enough has been said in this short paper to give rise to discussion.
Now please let nobody start off by saying: "What exactly is a buffer?"
A buffer is what prevents contradictions from being seen and merely
points the way to this great branch of personal work—that is, work on
oneself in order to change oneself by realizing contradictions in being.
Remember that this Work is to change you and unless you see that you
should change, and wish to know how to change, it is useless to attempt
to connect yourself with this Work. Let no one who is content with
himself or herself ever try to enter into this Work. Such people are
already dead. This Work is for those who wish to awaken from the dead.
Great Amwell House, November 16, 1946
A NOTE ON FALSE PERSONALITY
It is said in the Work that to be awake is to have no False Personality.
The more one is in False Personality and all the consequences resulting
from meeting daily life through False Personality, the more one is
asleep; while, on the contrary, the less one meets daily life through
False Personality, the more one is awake. We understand that False
Personality is composed of imagination—of false ideas about oneself.
Some people think of False Personality as being something blatant,
loud and boasting. But this is wrong. False Personality in one person
may sing: "What a fine fellow I am", and in another person sing:
"Poor little me". But the action on Being is the same in both cases—
that is, its power to produce disharmony in Being is the same and the
966
effort necessary to bring it face to face with facts about oneself equally
difficult. The object of uncritical self-observation is to collect facts about
oneself. For this reason Observing 'I' must not be right in front of
oneself in the sphere which False Personality influences but further
back. The power of self-observation increases as Observing 'I' moves
more internally. This partly depends on the deepening of feeling or
valuation of the Work when surface enthusiasms are seen through. We
spoke recently of this Work forming itself in the Intellectual Centre as
some transmitting instrument that Higher Centres can touch eventually,
built up gradually until all its parts are in order. This is done by two
things—effort of thinking in a new way and valuation. Valuation lies
in the emotional part of the Intellectual Centre at first; this, it was said
recently, begins to awaken Buried Conscience in the Emotional Centre
itself. During this process Observing 'I' moves inwards more internally
and begins to pass ultimately into Real Conscience. It is like John the
Baptist coming before Jesus. First it is necessary to have right Magnetic
Centre. This can bring us to the Work but cannot hold us in it. Then
comes Observing 'I', and through it the application of the teaching to
oneself. Then one observes oneself in the light of the Work, not in the
light of the past or social life. Then finally Real Conscience begins to
appear as Steward. Now nothing of this can happen as long as False
Personality is in the forefront and governs being. So it is necessary to
think about what False Personality is in oneself, and not assume one
knows what it is. As said, it takes many forms and yet is the same
thing. It is false—a lie—that one insists on telling to oneself. One is
then governed by a liar—in fact, by a Hasnamous. It is said that the
chief cause of giving wrong impressions is False Personality. This hint
can help in one's search for it. But to me it seems that the most terrible
things about False Personality are the narrow judgments it makes and
the tight fixed attitudes in which it imprisons us. You might think that a
rigid, inflexible life has nothing to do with False Personality. In that
case you have not understood enough about False Personality and its
different forms in people.
Now only the full power of the Work can redeem us from False
Personality. If you feel the Work as truth, apart from thinking it is true,
then you let into you the only force that can weaken False Personality.
Consider some of the things the Work says—such as "Man cannot
do", "Man is a multiplicity and not a unity", "Man has no Real
'I'," "Man is not conscious" and "Man is asleep". Such teachings, if
deeply felt, surely cannot be acceptable to False Personality? On the
contrary, it their meaning is deeply enough felt and realized through one's
own observation of oneself, they make the existence of False Personality
impossible. That is, they lead to awakening since, as was said, to be
awake is to have no False Personality.
Some of you will remember that recently we began to touch on the
meaning of that strange remark in the Gospels: "Judge not". But is
it so strange? How can you judge when you begin to realize your own
967
nothingness? The Work teaches that a man, through self-observation,
must come to the point of realizing that he is nothing—that not only
he really knows nothing, but is nothing. This is not acceptable to False
Personality. All real work on oneself leads from one sense of nothingness
to another and deeper sense of one's nothingness—not as a sentimental
idea coming from the rapid adjustment of False Personality, not a
pretence—but, though momentary, an actual, and overwhelming
realization. How can nothingness judge anybody? You know, it is also
said in the Gospels: "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured
unto you." What does this mean? It means on one side that as you
judge so shall you be judged—that is, having spent a life-time in judging others, through your idea of your superiority, through False Personality—then you shall be judged yourself. By whom? By yourself—
by your own False Personality. That is at least one haunting reason
why it is necessary to see and separate from False Personality as quickly
as you can. The Pharisees were full of False Personality. That is why
they were attacked by Jesus. It is just the same in this Work. The
False Personality is the Pharisee in oneself that judges everyone. Now
in this Work—in the Second Line of Work—that is, work with one
another—we should not judge. The Work never speaks of judging.
It speaks instead of understanding and external considering. In this
Work we have to learn how to hold one another, include one another,
not murder one another. And is not all murdering due to judging—as
if one were superior?
Great Amwell House, November 23, 1946
THIRD FORCE
We speak to-day of the Neutralizing Force of the Work. In one of
the diagrams it is said that the part of a human being that can grow
remains inactive as long as Life is the Neutralizing Force. Life as the
neutralizing principle keeps Personality active and Essence passive. So
it keeps that part of Being that can grow, inactive. Man is then
unfinished, incomplete, not a real being, having an outer part developed
and an inner part undeveloped and often quite at variance with the
outer part. Therefore from the standpoint of this teaching (and all
esoteric teaching of the past) life does not develop a man internally
but only outwardly in appearance—that is, exoterically, which means
outwardly, and not esoterically, which means inwardly. To develop
internally a human being must be given special knowledge that only
indirectly concerns life and its affairs—how to get on, how to be a
success, etc. This knowledge teaches him what he is and what he can
968
become internally and shews him how, esoterically—that is, internally
—he is nothing as yet as he is, and that if certain outer fears and
restrictions that exist in life and act as bonds were removed, he has no
inner bonds that would hold him together, and desires would break out
and he would dissolve, disappear, cease even to be the outer resemblance
of a man. In that case, every higher influence reaching him, having no
inner plane to act on, will pass straight through and downwards into
every form of inhumanity. That is the situation—namely, outer bonds
hold Man together. But, as the Work teaches, acting against the forces
of barbarism, which surround every culture and seek to swallow it, the
forces of Conscious Man act on Earth, through which cultures are
established, and resist for a time this inevitable encroachment. Every
manifestation of culture lasts only for a time and belongs to higher
influences reaching mankind and opposing the lower influences of
barbarism. These forces belong to the Neutralizing Force or Third
Force that the Work speaks of in connection with the making of
Personality passive whereby Essence can begin to develop. Once mankind in general has a developed Essence the forces of barbarism would
cease to act on the Earth among men and everything that is argued
about and fought about would cease. That is, war would cease, because
those extra-terrestrial influences that cause war would act on a
developed Essence quite differently from an undeveloped Essence and
be received by an inner plane in Man.
Now what does all this mean? It means, to begin with, that we
cannot do this Work and get results from it unless we have background.
Unless there is a background bigger than oneself, one cannot feel the
Work, and so it cannot fall on the right place, the right parts of centres,
within us, which is only possible through right valuation. It is not a
moral question, but an intelligent, practical question. For example,
if I try to turn on a light, where the switch does not exist, I cannot get
light. I am in the wrong place—here, I mean, in my own house, in
the house of myself—and I speak not of physical, outer light, but the
light of understanding, which is inner light. All the great diagrams of
the Work, starting from the Ray of Creation, with their inexhaustible
meaning, are to give us background and so to open up unused parts of
centres. Great background gives great force and great understanding.
It is beyond our small selves. The Work gives this scale in regard to
this question:
Greater Mind
Psychological Mind
Logical Mind
A-logical
Mind
Mr. Ouspensky said that unless a man realizes that Greater Mind
must exist, he cannot reach Psychological Understanding. Logical
Mind may explain everything in terms of itself, starting from the
observable world of matter. But it has no greater background and so
keeps a man where he is. Only the feeling of a greater background can
969
change a man, because it opens Greater Mind in him.
When a man begins to realize that life cannot be explained in terms
of itself and if taken thus has no meaning but becomes a torture to his
reason, then the cure lies only in reaching another and deeper interpretation of life—namely, that there is something over and above
visible life—another meaning of the whole matter. This is exactly what
the Work teaches. Life in terms of the Great Ray for Man on Earth,
as a part of the inserted amplifying machine called Organic Life, means
nothing. He is chaff. His real meaning is only derived from the SideOctave from the Sun, about which we recently spoke again in connection with Man serving Nature or Man serving the Work. Here, in
the Work, a man, a woman, gradually find their real significance—
that is, provided they have something early in themselves that can
respond to esoteric teaching or have come to the end of life and finally
have become certain there is something else. Such a man or woman
belongs to the category of Good Householder as defined by the Work—
namely, one who has done all duties and is responsible and remains so
but does not believe in life. This is the stepping-off place. In such a case,
the man, the woman, views life differently. Life ceases to be an end
in itself. Life and its situations become a means to work. Then every
experience is taken as an experience in itself—an experience in nonidentifying, for example—and results in life are not looked for. The
whole point of view alters. This is the beginning of Psychological Mind.
Then this man, this woman, is no longer controlled by the Third Force
of Life—the Neutralizing Force of life—but by the Neutralizing Force
of the Work, this other 3rd Force that can change the inner balance
so that no longer is Personality active and Essence passive, but Essence
becomes active gradually and grows, and Personality becomes passive
and gradually diminishes. Such a person is no longer a mechanical
person worked by life. He or she begins to leave the mechanical circle
of Humanity. They begin to become more balanced by the very operation of psychological understanding upon them. They no longer take
violent sides, for, owing to psychological understanding, they see both
sides together. So their judging changes—first, their judging of themselves—for mechanical self-judgment keeps us unbalanced, which is why
we have to observe uncritically. Then they understand others and do
not judge them—an incalculable freedom. Such people now pass from
logical understanding, which divides everything into "Yes" or into
"No", and so into judging. The two halves of them, the dark and light,
become intermixed. They understand a remark of the Work in its right
setting and on its right scale. They realize they have scale in them (as
they had from birth). Another light of understanding shews in their
minds and brings things into a harmony impossible for the logical mind
—that is, the formatory mind, which cannot by its function and structure, which is to divide everything into "Yes" and "No", possess the
third harmonious uniting force of the Work. You remember the Work
says that the Formatory Centre is Third Force blind. The Work-force
970
is meant—this Third Force of the Work. Now when the great meaning
of esoteric teaching enters the mind, it shifts the position of all things
within and gets them in the right order. It gives birth to μετάνοια, to
mental change, to psychological understanding. John the Baptist had
formatory mind and his religion was "Thou shalt not". So Christ said
he was "the greatest of those born of women, but that the least in the
Kingdom of Heaven was greater than he". Why? Because there can
be no approach to the higher level—to the "Kingdom"—save through
psychological understanding—that is, without greater background. He
had not psychological understanding and so was worried because Jesus
did not fast. The Work therefore gives us this tremendous background
in a few diagrams, which are inexhaustible in their density of meaning,
to let in psychological understanding. Therefore it is said that unless
we believe in Greater Mind, the Work cannot work in us, for otherwise,
unless we believe in Greater Mind, we cannot reach psychological
understanding:.
All this gives us the beginning of another 3rd Force distinct from
life and only this other 3rd Force can change being and lift us to a
new understanding. A man by himself cannot add one inch to his
stature—that is, as he thinks. New knowledge and new thinking are
needed. But the Work, if felt emotionally, can do so, even apart from
oneself and one's own small endeavours, for it puts us in touch with the
tremendous transforming forces that come from Higher Centres and
opens us to them gradually as we can bear it. For it destroys gradually
nearly all that we were and thought and felt. To be re-born one cannot
be what one was. That is obvious. One cannot change and be the
same. Life keeps us the same. The Work seeks to change us and tells
us what to separate from in order to change.
Great Amwell House, November 30, 1946
A NOTE ON EFFORT
The Work speaks of the necessity of effort. Strictly speaking, it says
that it is necessary to make right effort. The method of Sly Man is to
make right effort: he sees what particular effort is necessary at a
particular time, and when things are too easy for the time for him, he
creates difficulties for himself, as, for example, by doing things in the
most difficult way. In life, acting mechanically, we do things in the
easiest way, which is always the most mechanical way. In making
effort in the Work-sense, it must be understood that anti-mechanical
effort is meant. So the Work begins with general instructions on the
practical side to work against one's mechanicalness. This gives new
impressions. How can one cease to be a machine if one always
971
behaves mechanically? Man is a machine but his transformation into
a conscious being is awaited. So his general task is to work against his
mechanicalness. This needs special kinds of interesting efforts, for his
mechanicalness lies in all centres. Therefore efforts are in three main
directions. What did you make effort against yesterday? Against the
inertia which prevents you from thinking distinctly? Against pleasant
and unpleasant day-dreaming? Against general distaste? One can
always notice the stale flavour of mechanicalness within one and the
fresher feeling that comes from a new impression which even a short,
real Work-effort can create. In this connection I remind you that G.
said it is necessary to move the brain once a day—apart from the
bowels. In a large sense, people avoid extra and interesting effort and
remain heavily at the level of mechanical effort—that is, what they are
compelled to do by external circumstances—that is, as machines. Now
Work-effort is not what we are compelled to do by external circumstances. The Work and Work-effort belong to something extra, outside
nature, outside life—something very interesting. In this connection
mechanical life-efforts, that external circumstances dictate, can be
taken interestingly from a Work-attitude and no longer seem at variance with the Work. Let us speak first of this. How can you turn
mechanical life-effort into Work-effort?
The secret lies in taking your life as an exercise. To do this interesting
thing, a certain vision of life is required. All the background of the
Work, all the teaching about the Cosmic Ray, the Sun-Octave, and
the significance of Man, can give this vision, if you know it well mentally
and then imagine it so that it better connects with the Emotional
Centre. To know what you know, you must also imagine it with directed
imagination. Then you see your life as a miraculous adventure—that
ceases to be so once you identify with it. Then it is all spoiled and life
no longer becomes your teacher but your taskmaster, your Pharaoh.
It is only when we lift ourselves, when we can take life as this interesting
exercise, that life can become our teacher. In other words, only through
this vision that the Work gives, which separates us from the full power
of life, can life change into what it should be—into, as it were, an
intelligent person. With this attitude we gain the sense of being in life,
not of life or caused by life, and this is a preliminary to that form of
Self-Remembering where the three factors, (1) the seen object in outer
life, (2) my observed reaction to it, and (3) I myself, constitute a triple
simultaneous consciousness—a full triad—that is, a being conscious in
3 forces at the same time. It is clear that the usual state of being
always identified with life and its worries can never give such results.
This vision, therefore, which I have mentioned, is one belonging to a
right development in the understanding of the Work, which is to lessen
the power of life over us. One must get this vision—in which the centre
of gravity of the whole Work lies—a vision of the Work that lifts us
above life—in short, this Rope which we have to catch hold of. Hold
this Rope, when you catch it.
972
O. said that what people find difficult is that the Work changes as
you understand more. What was said may be no longer said, but
something different. For example, you are told at first in making effort
in the second line of Work not to try to like one another, but to stop
dislike. This is one kind of anti-mechanical effort. This is surely very
clear. It can be done. You can stop disliking, If done, it leads, almost
without our being told, to the next effort in scale, in ascending octave,
"that we have to like what we now dislike." There is great density of
meaning in this sentence. It applies to outer and inner—to the object
and to oneself. Now you can do nothing of all this if you are too
externalized, too far out, too far in front of yourself, too identified with
seen objects, with life, seeing everything outside you, and so a mere
sense-machine. You have to see that a person is not outside you but
is your idea of him, your imagination of him, your reaction to him (or
her), and not the object you see via your senses. Here begins the real
effort as regards the second line of Work—work, that is, about relationship, work about enduring without negativeness one another's unpleasant manifestations. Only in this way can an accumulator be made
among ourselves that eventually gives force to all of us. For one person
can, if a Work-group is established, give force to another, without
knowing it, simply by working against his or her mechanicalness
privately.
I will here remind you of what the Work says of life. It says that
under the 3rd force of life, things always divide, disunite, and are at
war—as life shews us. One party splits into two mutually hostile parties
and so on. Now the 3rd force of the Work unites. It holds people
together who in life would at once split and hate one another. Through
the 3rd force of the Work—and, let me emphasize—the work done
by each person on himself or herself in the light of the Work—an
accumulator can be made, by uniting people in a common understanding through a common language. The supreme effort that has to
be made in the Work is to feel the Work. Seek the Work first, fight for
it, keep it alive—and then all the rest follows. Remember that all
temptations in the Work-meaning are about feeling, valuing, cherishing
the meaning and reality of the Work, of Esotericism. This is faith—a
thing requiring much and constant effort of mind—an inner daily
action in both mind and heart. Faith is what is unsupported by the
evidence of the senses—by seen visible life. Now in ordinary seen life,
where people, even religious people, do not practically work on themselves each day, they accumulate a substance which cannot lead to
unity. For example, they criticize one another, talk scandal privately,
slander each other secretly and hate each other—in short, make every
kind of internal account against one another. They are mechanical
people, and just because they do not work they remain mechanical.
As a result, there is formed a thick, heavy, psychological substance
which G. called by one of his strange words—something like Tzarvarno.
"This substance," he said, in so many words, "accumulates in life and
973
makes all right relationship impossible. This substance has no Holy
Spirit in it. It is dead." He said it was due to the unnatural outward
and inward manifestations of people to one another and was an
accumulation of evil actions, thoughts and emotions, of which people
do not understand the consequences. The Work calls it simply
"making internal accounts." Now remember, the slightest, unworkedon "evil" towards another mounts up and makes this thick, dead
substance. Where ? In oneself. One may suspect how often illness is
due to this dead substance, daily formed. Now everything the Work
teaches us to practise, to make effort about, is to prevent this heavy
dead substance from forming itself. A good daily and nightly incinerator
for negative states is necessary.
To keep the Work alive one must make effort. I have spoken of
effort in regard to the 2nd line of Work. First we must make effort
to stop disliking. This is more easy than you might think, once you
have some self-observation and see your mechanical disliking. Then I
spoke of the second note in this effort: "that we must like what we
dislike". To like what we dislike is one great key to giving up useless
suffering. This releases us from our cramped judgment of others.
Through this we begin to feel "nothingness" rightly. One, as it were,
pushes off from the shore of oneself into the unknown—into what seems
nothingness—where only the Work can meet us. The Work cannot
meet us if we are full of our usual Personality.
Great Amwell House, December 7, 1946
EFFORTS AGAINST CERTAIN 'I'S
Everyone comes to a point in the Work where efforts against certain
particular 'I's that wish to maintain their power are necessary. These
'I's are hostile to the Work, only they often disguise themselves cleverly.
In connection with all this we must get back to principles. Let us recall
that from the standpoint of Esotericism—that is, real psychology—a
man, a woman, is not one but many—a crowd of different-sized,
different-aged and differently-dressed people marching along in disorder. In this crowd are people of all kinds, pleasant, unpleasant,
educated, uneducated, sick and healthy, polite and rude. One or two
or several of these people may be interested in the Work-ideas. The
rest may either not hear what they say or tell them they are fools, and
so on. All these voices can be heard talking within one at any time if
one observes oneself. Now to say 'I' to them all is to identify with them
and that means not a single thing can change in us. We are then stuck
to ourselves and cannot shift from what we are. That is the general
974
principle and it is just as well to repeat it to ourselves often and keep
on re-seeing what it means.
It is called the doctrine of 'I's. It is fundamental. It is directly
connected with the teaching about the level of mechanical Man's being
—namely, that his being is characterized by multiplicity and is devoid
of unity. It must be realized personally by self-observation—by the
First Line of Work, work on oneself. Now people may try genuinely
to work on themselves but try to do so without any observation of 'I's.
They take the whole mass of themselves as one, as 'I'. It is impossible
to work on yourself if you take the whole mass of yourself as one, as
'I'. Of this we have to be continually reminded. Have you seen a
view of yourself marching along as a crowd of 'I's, some good, some
evil, some in tatters, some over-dressed, some well-meaning, some
slanderous, some brave, some self-pitying, some intelligent, some
stupid, some a little developed, some undeveloped, and childish, and
so on? This marching column, marching anyhow, now some leading,
now others, this haphazard crew, is leading one's life for one. This is a
phrase in the Work not used recently. I was reminded of it by a letter
I received from a person once in the Work years back. He wrote:
"There was much in the Work which I did not understand, but a small
fragment, a phrase you used, touched something in me and has haunted
me ever since—a partial understanding of what you meant when you
said that one contains within oneself a group of conflicting 'I's which
lead one's life for one." He said he had begun to realize, on looking
back, that he had never led his own life, but that he had been compelled
to lead a life that these 'I's in him insisted upon hi? leading. Now it is
these 'I's that lead our lives for us, arrange things for us, make us do
this and that and think and say as they please and make us dislike
and like as they dictate—and the trouble is that we take them all as 'I'
and believe that this is 'I' myself liking and 'I' myself disliking. To
realize, to attain the realization that one need not go any longer with
an 'I' or believe it for a moment, is a great release. It is the beginning
of inner freedom. It is a definite move, however small, in the direction
of Real 'I'. Often we have, leading our lives for us, some unpleasant
'I's that take pleasure in making us unhappy. They are clever at
pretence. For instance, they say in a sweet sad way—or rather make
one say such things as: "If only I had met this Work before, it would
have made such a difference to my life." They induce this thought
and one simply thinks it is one's own thought and so that it is true.
'I's induce thoughts in us and we take them as our thoughts. Negative
'I's—that is, 'I's that can only breathe properly when one is negative—
are very clever in this respect. When you are in a reasonable state they
wait until they can induce a thought that makes you negative. Then
they feed on your negative state. It is all so simple and clear once one
has begun to understand practically about 'I's and has lost the illusion
that one is an actual person.
Now I will continue from the last paper on "Effort" and speak
975
further on mechanical liking and disliking. It was said that first we
have to make effort in regard to stopping internally mechanical disliking
and it was also said that this is not so difficult to do, once one can notice
it at work by observation. One says "Stop" to it. One makes "inner
stop" in regard to it, without arguing or self-justifying. Or, to put it
another way, one stops inner talking about it and practises inner silence.
This you can all do. It was then said that we have next to begin to like
what we dislike and it was added that this leads to the right feeling
of nothingness. For the Work cannot reach us if we are full of selffeeling, full of our importance, our egotism, our sense of being right.
It enters what is lowest, most despised, where we are nothing,
not something. It is near when we feel we do not know, not when
we feel we know. In general, the more Personality is passive, the
closer are the influences of the Work, and it is closer to the passive
parts of Personality rather than the active. We are told that to like
what we dislike is the quickest path to giving up one's suffering. We
are told that our suffering is the only thing we can sacrifice. The Work
says we must sacrifice our suffering. Now how can liking what we
dislike rid us of the mass of useless suffering stored up in our TimeBody, that all have, whatever they may say? What can it possibly do
to those many 'I's that all enjoy suffering—and indeed often nearly eat
a person up—or give rise to recurrent attacks of suffering which the
Instinctive Centre loathes and which are the source of so much physical
illness? If there is anything in the earlier stages of the Work that
characterizes the Way of Sly Man more than liking what one dislikes,
I do not know it. This is being sly, this is being clever, this is being
intelligent—this is right effort. Suppose a man more or less dislikes
everything and everybody—what then? Think for yourselves. Will he
feel his own nothingness or will he make internal accounts? He will
be full of complaining. Everything will be difficult and restricted for
him. He will certainly be hard to please.
Now all this applies to oneself and has to become a subject of selfstudy. For example, a person whom one dislikes should become a matter
of genuine interest—and here one will have some real work to do—
some real conscious observation and non-identifying and finding the
same qualities in oneself—in fact, all that the Work teaches. When
you find a person who obviously dislikes you there is another task for
personal work. Notice what he dislikes in you if you can. Remember
that we have to thank those who make it necessary for us to work on
ourselves. Work does not mean behaving mechanically—as we please
—but behaving more consciously. If we are going to let those 'I's who
hitherto have led our lives for us take on this Work we shall indeed find
ourselves in a state of confusion. At the Institute in France what we
were in life scarcely counted. Personality was scarcely allowed to exist.
Why? Because the object of the Work (and of all esoteric teaching) is
change of being. How can being change if the 'I's that have always
led your life for you still remain in full power? No, change of being
976
means change of yourself and change of yourself means that other 'I's
—'I's that wish to work and understand and eventually form DeputySteward—come forward and take charge. So the time comes, as was
said, when efforts against certain particular 'I's that wish to maintain
their power and are hostile to the Work have to be made. Many of
these 'I's belong to the life-notion we have of ourselves—that is, to the
False Personality. Others belong to the formatory centre and others
elsewhere—e.g. to past hatreds. The Work is easily strong enough to
overcome them once it has really got into one's mind and made one
think anew. First get inner attitude to the Work right—then everything
will follow in the right order.
Great Amwell House, December 14, 1946
OUR PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNTRY
Someone said recently: "How is it that we can have the same
experience?" I answered that when a person has the same experience
as another person it means that they have both been in the same part
of psychological space. As this was not understood, I will try here to
explain the idea further. It is well-known that in respect to books
having a mystical quality, as it is called—that is, containing B
influences, however ancient—we find many similar ideas and experiences. Historically speaking, in countries widely separated by space,
by time and by language, we find records exist that are similar in trend
and are not simply concerned with matters of life. It might be said that
most ancient manuscripts are of this kind. Whether this is so or not, it
is not surprising if it is so, since all literature started from the Conscious
Circle of Humanity and, passing into the world, became B influences.
The reason for this is that the level of mechanical Man is such that
C influences—or direct conscious teaching—cannot be grasped. So
only a distortion of real teaching is possible in written form, and
"either-or"—"Yes-or No"—substituted for the new mind of Third Force
that lies between the opposites—namely, the mind that can think in
terms of Yes and No and is not chained to the opposites of "Is it true?"
or "Is it not true?" The ordinary mind is, of course, formatory
centre which is Third Force blind and only creates disturbances.
In life, in physical space, we visit the same houses, the same places—
provided we actually go to them—Paris, Brighton, and so on. It is the
same with psychological space. But psychological space is not visited
by the physical body, but by the mind, the emotions and the sensations
—that is, via the centres. This invisible world is as real as—and becomes
far more real than—physical space. So I have taught you in commentaries about the idea of your having a psychological country. Where
977
are you now in that country? For although you are in the same place
in a physical sense—say, in 5 Heath Row, N.W.12—you can be in a
vast number of different places in your psychological space, in your
psychological country—and it is where you are in that psychological
country that begins to matter so very much as you realize what the
Work teaches. The Work is about your inwardness—where you are
inwardly—namely, in this great inner country on to which centres
open.
The Work expresses this idea by speaking about centres and different
parts of centres. For example, one may be in a wrong centre for the
business in hand—or in a wrong part of a centre. It is your position
in your psychological country that matters. One should ask oneself:
"Where am I?" And this question does not relate to outer sense-given
space but to that inner space of which only self-observation can make
you conscious. It is in connection with this that the Work teaches so
much about that psychological position called the negative part of
Emotional Centre. This inner psychological invisible country, in which
we really live our lives, has good and bad places. It has in it heaven,
hell and an intermediate place. When we are in the negative part of
Emotional Centre, we are, inwardly, in hell—or at the mouth of hell.
And if we identify, if we consent, if we make internal accounts, if we
have no idea of cancelling them and neither realize where we are
internally nor know what we have to do—namely, especially remember
ourselves—then we have no Second Body—no inner intelligent sense
of our direction in this inward spiritual world—and fall into every
ditch, never understanding that the Work is to teach us where we are
internally.
In these different localities in inward space, we will get what is
there—i.e., in slums we will be knocked on the head. One usually walks
in "unpleasant places" and expects outer life to be nice and pleasant.
How can this be possible? How can you expect things to improve if
you are walking about all the labyrinths, the squalor, the vast, dark city
of the negative part of Emotional Centre? Only by sincere self-confession, only by sincere self-observation, can you be aware of where you
are dallying internally, in your psychological world, your inner world,
however you pretend with a bitter smile that you only have the best
intentions. Then you lie and your smile is tainted.
Now where you are in this inner psychological country is not
necessarily due to you. Things turn: life is a turning circle. The wheels
turn, like the Enneagram. Everything comes round again. But when
you find yourself in a bad place and see where you are, through the
development and inner light of Real Conscience, you only get out
through valuation. The work, if valued, can get you out, unharmed,
from many unpleasant places that you have to endure for a time. It
is just like external life. If you value living in a pleasant place and
happen to be in a bad place, you will tolerate your situation without
identifying for a time, and you will not buy a house in the bad spot, but
978
wait till you can get a better house. This is called "not saying Yes to
your bad states". For remember state psychologically is place physically.
Every internal state is a place in the great psychological world of heaven
and hell. Because this internal word exists, so can you be in the same
part of it as someone else has been. So you have the same experience.
And if you have been in a wonderful place in this inwardly-touched
world, so you can share your experience with another who also has
been there and seen the same things. This is why there can be a
similarity of experience.
Great Amwell House, December 21, 1946
ON FINDING SOLUTIONS
On one occasion Mr. Ouspensky was speaking of someone whom he
described as a violent just man. He said, in so many words: "He
believes that there are final solutions for everything. This makes him
violent. He does not realize that everything is turning and changing,
that Man cannot do and that there are no final solutions. If there were,
life would cease to be life. It would be death. You must understand
that life is a perpetual-motion-machine. The same problems come
round again and again and people try to solve them, to find final
solutions to them, and no one can. How could they? We have to
realize that the main life-problems are insoluble. There is only one
solution to all problems and that is change of attitude." I said to him:
"You mean that one must always start from oneself?" He said: "Yes,
because you cannot change life, so why start from life, from the other
person, and seek first to change him? But you can change yourself,
and so change your reactions to life. Change of attitude changes the
way life touches you. Attitudes connect us with outer things and make
them important or unimportant, according to the kinds of attitudes
we have been taught. So we get bound to unimportant things and
take them as important—as if they were our whole life—and things
that are really important we neglect."
In this connection, it is clear that Mr. Ouspensky emphasized what
the Work means for a person who has begun to understand its direction
and import. One has to start with oneself. It is this "oneself" that has
to be changed. The Work is not about outer but about inner things—
things in oneself—and therefore it begins with self-observation. In
beginning with self-observation it lays its stress on you—on what you
are like. Life, from the teaching of the Work, is a vast interknit
machinery in which everything happens. So it removes all emphasis
from life, from what happens, from how people behave to you, and lays
the emphasis on what kind of person you are and how you take things.
979
Now as regards this thing called you, it teaches that it is a mass of
acquired associations and buffers, a mass of acquired attitudes and so
of acquired mechanical reactions to life. These attitudes, these reactions,
can be changed. You need not react in your typical way. You need
not feel depressed, negative, or violent, as you ordinarily do. It is your
psychological machinery that makes you do so. Life need not have the
ever-recurring, same effect upon you that it habitually has and that
you take for granted as right. The habits of taking life as you do are
because you have a locally acquired stamped machinery. But you can
alter it if you begin to observe how you mechanically take things and
realize your mechanicalness and have eventually sudden flashes of
insight whereby you realize how you are always taking things mechanically and need not do so. Then you begin to see what the Work is
about—i.e. self-change. The truth is that people do not see what
"personality" means. It means the acquired side of yourself—and it is
this that has to be made passive—namely, this mechanical way of
taking life, people and yourself. This is certainly a great truth that few
can meet successfully, being so convinced of their own Tightness in all
things. When a new person is brought into this Work I first of all
think: "Can this person ever see himself or herself and begin to work
on themselves, or are they crystallized in life, in their attitudes and in
their estimate of themselves?" One notices how they talk, one
encourages them to talk as they habitually do, and then eventually one
can tell either that they will never be able to separate themselves from
what life has made them, or that they might to a slight extent, or that
they might even go further and actually begin to change their being.
Now if a man cannot possibly see himself, if he is so glued to himself
that he cannot observe what he is glued to—then he cannot do this
Work internally, although he may do sufficient externally if he has
being on the level of Good Householder to work externally—that is,
serve the Work and its outer discipline. And a person who does this
faithfully may be given gradually, by the power of the Work, in measure
that will- not injure him, the beginning of insight into what he has
hitherto taken as himself. I say, gradually, because a man without
inner life, if he were to be suddenly detached from all he values and
prides himself on, would be completely smashed. Having his foundations in life, and having nothing else, he would collapse under the
vision of a higher level of himself and another order of things.
Now to come back to this question of finding solutions. The Work
teaches that the solution of things lies ultimately only in yourself—in
how you take things. Let us take the question of liking and disliking,
that many do not understand yet. First you are told, in the Second
Line of Work—that is, in relation to others—that you have to start with
yourself and stop disliking. As was pointed out, this can be done. How?
By noticing where the impression of a person whom you mechanically
dislike tends to fall on centres and not identifying with it. Yes—it
enters and stimulates its typical reaction. But if you know anything
980
about self-observation, you already have a space of time in you—a
pause—before the impression can get fully into the centres and have
its full mechanical effect. Self-observation opens a little room, a little
space, and time, between the incoming impression and its lodgment in
the place that habitually receives it and reacts to it. Self-observation
begins to make an inner life in a man. Eventually he undergoes a
growth of Consciousness in this way—namely, that Consciousness
begins to intervene between the impression and the reaction. The man
himself begins to stand between outer life coming in as impressions and
his psychological machinery lying in 'I's and rolls on centres. He
intervenes. He then begins to take life—that is, impressions—consciously, so he can stop dislike. And so often the solution lies just in this
—to stop mechanical disliking.
The next point is that when you have this pause in you, this
momentary consciousness in a new place—you can begin even to like
what you dislike. As was said, if you can stop mechanical disliking—
the common source of loss of force and negativeness—by catching the
impression of the disliked person before it fully engages the acquired
machine you take as yourself—then this work on yourself will lead you
to the possibility of sounding the next note in this octave—namely, of
beginning to like what hitherto you so easily, so continually, so
unchallengeably, so automatically, disliked. One must shift oneself
from what one is. And if you continue to dislike mechanically you cannot shift yourself. All mechanical reactions to life, to others, keep you
exactly where you are. Remember, work on yourself must be accompanied by work in regard to others. Work means conscious work—i.e.,
not behaving mechanically. And here I might say that the most
deceived men or women are those who always say, parrot-fashion, that
they always consider others and put them first—as if one could
mechanically, by habit, do such a thing, which requires the highest
conscious effort constantly, yes, every day, renewed. In beginning to
like what you dislike, start with a person you know. First, stop disliking.
Then see for yourself what happens.
Now take yourself. You have quarrelled with someone. What is
the solution? Where are you going to start from, if you really wish to
work consciously? With the other person? Certainly not. It is your
fault, so start with yourself. What is wrong with you—not with the
other person? The solution lies with and in yourself. In this Work
everything must be turned the other way round. It is you—not the
other. So long as a person sees the solutions of his troubles only in new
arrangements of people, in others, in things, he will be negative. As a
result, his mind will be dead—that is, he will not be able to think aright.
Negative emotions prevent the mind from working rightly. Instead, a
person indulges in negative recriminations—which is not thinking. Is
it not extraordinary how people spend their lives in vague negative
recriminations? No, one must begin with oneself in all one's own
troubles. Start from what you take as you and observe this thing you
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take so glibly as you yourself . Do not start with the person whom you
think to be the source of your misery. Then you will see how the Work
is like that esoteric myth of Perseus who had to slay the Gorgon of
hatred and all negativeness, who, if you looked once at her, turned you
to stone. So Perseus, by looking at her with a mirror—that is, the other
way round—and so seeing her in himself—slew her and released from
her Pegasus, the horse, which means, in esoteric symbolism, the mind,
on which he mounted.
Great Amwell House, December 28, 1946
FEELING OF I
On one occasion Mr. Ouspensky was asked: "What is the right
feeling of oneself?" He answered that this question belonged to what
he had spoken of earlier—namely, "the wrong feeling of 'I'." He said,
in so many words: "In this Work one must separate oneself from
pictures, from 'I's that like to suffer, from internally considering 'I's,
that enjoy negative emotions, that justify their past, and so on. A
person may have a stereotyped wrong feeling of 'I' and through this
everything is wrong in him or her. Only by observing that he or she
has wrong feeling of 'I' and separating from it can they expect to begin
to have right feeling of 'I'. For example, how many people simply hold
themselves too tightly, too rigidly, and do not observe it." On another
occasion he was speaking on the same question and said that wrong
feeling of 'I' is always due to buffers, which give a one-sided feeling
of 'I'. "For a man to feel himself rightly," he said, "he must have Real
Conscience, which is to feel all together, and no one can have Real
Conscience if he is full of buffers. Such a man or woman sees only one
side, only is one side of themselves. Real Conscience is the same for
all people and has nothing to do with different moral or religious
systems. It is a general and permanent phenomenon given to us, but
now buried in everyone—that is, in sleeping humanity. The esoteric
problem is how to awaken it. Man has fallen asleep and because of
this world-state of sleep, he has lost touch with all that is of the most
importance to him, all that could help and guide him aright. As a
consequence, all sorts of religious theories and methods of education
and social experiments have replaced what alone could truly shew him
what he has to do, and how he should live and what he is. If a man
begins to know what he is, he begins to have right feeling of himself.
Only Real 'I' can ultimately give a man right feeling of himself in the
full sense. But Real 'I' and Real Conscience are not far distant from
each other. A man asleep can only have an artificial feeling of 'I',
according to what he esteems himself on. It will be a false feeling of 'I'
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—and one that he may suffer from all his life without realizing it. He
has buffers in place of Conscience. Real Conscience is only possible
in the absence of buffers."
Let us take to-day this phrase used by Mr. Ouspensky: "If a man
begins to know what he is, he begins to have the right feeling of himself."
This Work is about self-knowledge. You all know that over the Temple
at Delphi, where esoteric teaching existed in the days of ancient Greece,
was written above the portal: "Know thyself". Now no man, no woman,
can know themselves, unless they begin with direct impersonal, uncritical self-observation. Why should this change the usual feeling of 'I',
the usual feeling of oneself? Because by this uncritical, impersonal,
almost remote observation of oneself, one begins to see that one is quite
different from what one has hitherto taken oneself as. One's usual
feeling of oneself, feeling of 'I', does not fit what one is. Understand
that you may have had all your life a totally wrong feeling of 'I' and
this wrong feeling has stopped all further growth in yourself and
probably spoilt your life. You have become fastened to an error, a
mistake, something not real in yourself. As long as life is the neutralizing
force, you will be unable to tear away this totally wrong, not real, feeling
of yourself, with which you meet your daily existence and other people.
Only through self-observation done through the strength of the third
force of the Work will this fixed life-produced feeling of yourself begin
to change. And what a relief it is to find that you have been trying to
lead your life with an utterly wrong set of 'I's, with the wrong, generally
dominant feeling of 'I'. It is a marvellous thing to find you can move
in new directions internally and escape from this spurious invention of
yourself. Just say to yourself: "Why am I always like this? Why do I
always feel this? Why, in short, am I always the same fixed person,
with the same points of view, the same attitudes, the same little
unpleasantnesses, the same judgments, the same dreariness, the same
criticisms, the same thoughts, the same reactions?" Now you know this
is called: "The realization of one's mechanicalness"—and this again is
called: "The first stage of Self-Remembering." Why? Because it
means that a person who begins to see internally his or her mechanicalness has already separated something from what they have taken themselves complacently as. Something different from themselves has
appeared in their inner world. This is the beginning of development
—that development which begins with Observing 'I', and leads to
Deputy-Steward—and then to Steward and at last to Real 'I'. Is it
not extraordinary to reflect that we are not Real 'I', but false 'I', and
that what we are and take ourselves as is all invention? Is it not tragic
that all these wrong feelings of 'I', these wrong feelings of what oneself
is, these inventions of ourselves, lead our lives?
Now there can be no change of being without an alteration in the
ordinary feeling of 'I'. The Three Lines of Work speak of this—work
on oneself, work in connection with others and making new relations
with them, and work for the sake of the Work itself. To remain the
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same, to have the same outer manifestations, to feel the same feeling
of 'I', means simply that one is not following any of the three lines of
Work. Sometimes an overwhelming sense of the Work may alter a
person. Sometimes a realized self-observation may alter a person. But
if you have still the same feeling of 'I' you have not yet changed being.
Great Amwell House, January 4, 1947
POSITIVE IDEAS IN THE WORK
I
It was said recently that one should not do anything negatively.
In this age it might be said that in the world people tend, as a whole,
to do things negatively. For example, factory workers do not, and
indeed cannot, take pleasure in their work—that is, the emotional part
of Moving Centre is not used, so they have to have music and so on as
a substitute. The Moving Centre works infinitely better when the
emotional part collaborates. Then a person takes pleasure in his movements, in the skill of his hands, etc., and he becomes a craftsman through
the guidance of the emotional part—that is, of emotional cognition.
We spend a great deal of our time in being negative and doing things
negatively without noticing it. The difference is between going to, or
being dragged to, something. If you go to a thing from yourself you
work at it positively. Otherwise it works you and that is one form of
doing things negatively. One source of this is when we doubt. The
Work is always tempting us and so making us negative. Temptation is
when we doubt the end. It is easy to give up, to think things useless—that
is, to think negatively. One has to say to oneself: "I can work"—and
say it further and further inside oneself. People do not recognize it as
temptation. Here is an example in a letter on the subject: "I have
noticed that temptation can be met if it is recognized as temptation. I had
an example last night. I was about to fall into a well-known Slough of
Despond, doubting the end, and then it suddenly struck me that it
might be temptation and that perhaps it was not inevitable and that
perhaps one need not go into it, if one had some help. In the end I
went to sleep quite peacefully." We must live with a plan, noticing
ourselves in regard to it. If there is no aim, no plan, no individual
direction, there is nothing to notice, nothing to work on. We remain
where we were, for then we do not act consciously in our relation to
our inner world and what we allow to go on in it, and in relation to
the world of others who are mirrors to us. Self-Remembering increases
the force of consciousness. The act of Self-Remembering, as, for
example, remembering distinctly one's plan, one's aim, in the midst of
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some difficult situation, actually creates new energy. It is like the light
becoming much brighter, as if the central station had increased the
current. And this is just what it is. We get connected up inside again
and the Work then can give us force. Falling asleep, letting smouldering
negative states grow unchecked, breaks up right connections. The
whole plan and system of the Work is simply to give right inner connections so that force from higher centres can be received. The act of
Self-Remembering, in a full sense, includes all the Work, all its teaching
and new ways of thinking, all one has learned from it, all that one has
gained from it, all that it means, all the insights, all the new experiences
—all this together. Then right connections open up again and new
force passes through one. What does this force do? It overcomes the
negative mess of life, which people are always accumulating, which
forms wrong connections. It increases consciousness—which is light.
Through this light one sees everything more clearly, just as if you turn
on the light in a room in which you have been blundering about and
knocking everything down in the dark. Yes, Self-Remembering gives
new light. This light is consciousness, increase of consciousness. The
Work is to increase consciousness.
Now to have more consciousness requires a not going to sleep
inside, for that is to invite and encourage darkness. Going to sleep
means not doing anything in any of the three lines of Work. You neither
work on yourself and your personal ambitions and desires, nor with
others, and on your mechanical contempts and dislikes of them, nor do
you value the Work itself and keep its ancient worth alive, between
your two hands, as a delicate thing. Do you expect this ancient Work
to give you straightway the highest consciousness and understanding?
That would be trivial, and would point to a tedious level of being. The
Work means work—inner work—many inner and outer readjustments
—many self-realizations and slow difficult periods during which you
will the Work, as a small guarded plant, between your two hands, and
keep your eyes on it enough. That means your attention and the two
hands mean inner and outer consciousness—consciousness of yourself
and consciousness of others. This plant begins to die if you do not look
at it enough. G. compared it with an egg hatching out that you must
not allow to get too cold. One ancient teaching says: "not more than
8 hours." Well, it is something like that. For people who only think
of this ancient Work once every week at meetings everything has to be
taught again. They do nothing themselves in the first, second or third
lines of Work. They have no internal heat, no esoteric faith, only lifefaith. They expect to be warmed up by others. This is a poor state of
being and understanding. "What," said Mr. Ouspensky once, "have
you done since the last meeting? What have you seen? What have you
understood? What have you noticed?" Silence was the answer. Now
we know that as long as a person is himself and delighted with himself,
as long as he takes himself as himself and is satisfied, as long as he cannot
by self-observation begin to separate himself from what he has up to
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now taken as himself, he cannot change his being. He will be as he has
been—that is, his being will remain the same.
Now to change being it is necessary to have positive ideas. Let us
speak of this. It was once said by Mr. Ouspensky: "The state of
humanity can be compared with the following octave":
Mr. Ouspensky said: "Mechanical man can be compared with the
notes Do, Re, Mi. He cannot get to the notes Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do. For
what reason? Because mechanical humanity has not got positive ideas.
Only positive ideas can make mankind pass the place of vacuum, of
nothingness, the place where collectivism, crowds, medals, examinations, are no good at all. What makes a man want to go on ? He wants
to rival someone else. Mechanical men cannot get beyond this because
life as third force cannot get them beyond this. You have to pass the
place where life-things are no good. Probably it is impossible on this
planet for humanity to reach this stage. Only individuals may reach it.
The Work is a special forcing-house to produce in people positive ideas
without which they cannot pass from Mi to Fa."
To change being, to grow, to fulfil oneself, a certain inner positive
pressure of attention is necessary. One must have positive ideas. One
must wish to change. This has two sides. One understands from the
Work that one's life on Earth means that one has something quite
definite to do or else one would not be here. That is a positive idea.
The other side is that one finds in oneself many undesirable things that
one is vaguely aware of and sometimes uncomfortable about. This side
must become a positive idea and not a negative one. It is easy to find
fault with oneself in a certain way. This is a negative idea. Through
right self-observation one sees what one has to alter. Then the negative
idea becomes a positive idea. No one can change through negative
ideas—through vague self-accusations, for example, or through a certain
kind of miserableness. All this is negative. Do not listen to miserable
'I's that love to drag you down. "There is much in everyone," said G.,
"that seeks to destroy him." Further it must be understood that as
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long as a man thinks he can do he is acting from a negative idea. His
third force is life.
Now it is necessary to wake up and feel the shock of the Workteaching and see that the cause of all negative emotions and states is
in you. It is useless to look at the outer cause of them. You must
separate from them. And also recollect that negative states create only
negative states in ourselves and in others. Try not to speak to people
as if they could do, without seeing if you can do what you blame them
for not doing. In that case shew them how to do it themselves. To be
negative and blame another is to start from a negative idea. To see
that one must work on oneself as regards negative emotion and stop
identifying with it is a positive idea. Other people cannot do any more
than you can. So try to stop speaking of them and criticizing them as
if they could. Other people may be able to understand—if you understand and can teach them from your own understanding. Do not live
in a frozen world of thinking that others should be different. This is
the ordinary life-situation here. Accept your situation intelligently and
remember others are mirrors of yourself. Do not think what you see in
others cannot possibly be in you. God is what you need. Begin with
your neighbour. He shews you what you need—that is, what you need
to see in yourself and become conscious of. We all need to become more
conscious. All Work requires force. People have not enough force
because they have not distinct positive ideas about the Work and what
they are doing and what it means in life. The more you feel the Work,
the more force of consciousness is possible for you—that is, consciousness
above that required for serving life, serving nature. Everyone can
become more conscious—that is, have more force. But this is only
possible by following all this ancient Work teaches. One must work
for it—pay for it. If you prefer sleep, sleep. If you wish to awaken,
work.
Great Amwell House, January 11, 1947
POSITIVE IDEAS IN THE WORK
II
Let me repeat again that we should not do anything negatively.
Whatever you do or rather, have to do, do not do it negatively. Last
time this was spoken of, together with the subject of positive ideas and
how Man in general is kept at the notes Do, Re, Mi: Do, Re, Mi, over
and over again. Real development is impossible because he does not
possess sufficient positive ideas to jump and reach the note Fa and so
approach the sphere of Conscious Man. Now it is obvious that if we
987
do anything negatively we have not a positive idea connected with it.
Looking at life, we find considerable reasons for having negative ideas
about it. The most of literature is negative, the most of poetry is
negative. History is a history of crime, and so on. How, it might be
said, can we have positive ideas under such circumstances? Only by
a new set of ideas—another range of ideas.
Negative ideas have very great attractive power. A negative idea,
such as that the Universe is meaningless, can draw millions into its
vortex and hold them as in prison. This takes away the chance of
individual growth from them and so renders them subjects for masssuggestion. This is the effect of negative ideas—namely, to destroy
individual importance and meaning and inner individual thought and
make a man dependent on the outside and so more and more under
the power of external life. We here catch a glimpse of the meaning of
negative ideas as distinguished from positive ideas. A positive idea puts
a man less and less under the power of the outside, of external life.
You remember that it is constantly repeated in the Work that as long
as life is the Third Force, you cannot change. That is, this inner
development, possible for Man, which all esoteric teaching is about,
cannot take place. The Work says that unless a man has undergone his
destined development he remains in the experiment of creating a selfdeveloping organism on Earth, as distinct from the animals and plants,
etc., that form the main bulk of Organic Life. Life, as Third or
Neutralizing Force, keeps outer Personality active and inner Essence
passive. Yes, but one must begin to ponder for oneself as to what this
means. The real man remains undeveloped by life. Only another
force, coming from another direction and having another range of
ideas, can bring about the lessening of the life-formed Personality, with
its craving for visible rewards, and lead to the stirring and awakening
of the inner man—the essential man—the development of which is the
object of esoteric teaching.
Now, to interrupt the theme for a moment—what does esoteric
mean? In the New Testament the outer man and the inner man are
spoken of. The outer man is called the exoteric man, the inner man the
esoteric man. What does this mean? The outer man, the Personality,
may be well-trained and will never steal, let us say. But if all fear were
removed, he would steal. But if the inner or esoteric man were developed,
he would not steal, understanding why not. He becomes internally
responsible, That is the difference. If the inner man were developed,
no police would be necessary. Now, in us, life develops the outer man,
but not the inner man. Esoteric teaching is therefore about the
development of this inner, as yet undeveloped, Essence—the esoteric
man. Then, whatever happens in outer life, a man behaves rightly—
from himself, internally. In the Greek, εξω means outer: and εσω means
inner. Esotericism therefore is a teaching applying to the inner man—
to what you are in yourself, apart from external restraints and fears.
So the Work starts with self-observation—that is, observing your inner
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states and what you are like. It does not start with external observation
as does Science.
A man, a woman, in this Work, must learn by self-observation that
what they seem to be, what they pretend to be outwardly, is not what
they are internally. Realizing this, they begin to suffer from the sense
of contradiction. This is useful suffering. The outer and inner must
conform eventually and become one—a unity. Man asleep takes himself for granted as a unity. When he begins to observe himself, he
realizes he is two in the broadest sense—that is, what he pretends to
be and what he is. Then he must eventually become a unity. Then
outer and inner are the same. This is the first step. To be kind to a
person outwardly and hate and murder him inwardly is the ordinary
state of Man asleep. In this psychological state nothing can change in
the man. He is a failure in the experiment of self-development.
Now to return to positive ideas. "Unless", said Mr. Ouspensky,
in so many words, "Man believes in Greater Mind, he is useless for the
Work. To believe in Greater Mind is to have a positive idea—and
without positive ideas no one can develop. A man who thinks he is
isolated, independent, that he knows and that he can do with his limited
finite mind, with all its ignorance, starts from active Do, and then
describes a descending octave and so perishes. History is full of such
examples. To think one can do is to start from a negative idea. To
realize one cannot do and to study how to do and what is necessary is
to start from a passive Do—that is, to begin an ascending octave."
Mr. Ouspensky used often to talk in this way.
You might very well think that the idea that you can do—can, for
instance, reform the world, change other people, and so on—is a
positive idea. On the contrary, it is a negative idea. It is as negative
an idea as if you were to think that you could, without any very special
knowledge, operate on a man's brain. In this Work, people who think
they can do are called Lunatics. Mr. Ouspensky once asked Mr.
Gurdjieff what a man has to do to assimilate his teachings:
"What to do?" asked Mr. Gurdjieff, as though surprised. "It is
impossible to do anything. A man must first of all understand certain
things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly
about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning
to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong
foundation and the result will be worse than before."
"How can we get rid of false ideas?" Mr. Ouspensky asked. "We
depend on the forms of our perception. False ideas are produced by
the forms of our perception."
Mr. Gurdjieff shook his head. "Again you speak of something
different," he said. "You speak of errors arising from perceptions but
I am not speaking of these. Within the limits of given perceptions
Man can be more or less deluded. As I have said before, man's chief
delusion is his conviction that he can do. All people think that they can
do, all people want to do and the first question all people ask is what
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are they to do. But actually nobody does anything and nobody can
do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood. Everything
happens. All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes
from him—all this happens—and it happens in exactly the same way as
rain falls as a result of a change in the temperature of the atmosphere,
as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the wind.
Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings,
convictions, opinions and habits are the results of external influences,
external impressions. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single
thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels—all
this happens. Man cannot discover anything, cannot invent anything.
It all happens."
Great Amwell House, January 18, 1947
FURTHER NOTE ON POSITIVE IDEAS IN THE
WORK AND REVERSAL OF SIGNS
A positive idea may be tentatively defined, in these commentaries,
as an idea that lessens Personality and increases Essence. It was said
last time that the idea that "Man can do" is not a positive idea, although
most people would say it was. But the idea that Man can do increases
Personality. It is exactly what Personality thinks. The Work says:
"Man cannot do." And this is a positive idea. Why? Because it
lessens Personality, whereas the idea that Man can do increases
Personality and therefore is a negative idea. Personality has no life of
itself. Only what has life of itself can do. For example, we have no
ideas of our own. All rolls and combinations of 'I's form Personality,
all records on rolls made from impressions, all buffers, attitudes, pictures,
all this makes up the machine of Personality. With this absurd machine
we move about, believe in ourselves. Yet we cannot think a new thought.
We can only compare, copy, alter. This machine, which is dead,
surrounds Essence which is alive, but inarticulate, undeveloped. A man
with developed Essence, a man who has undergone this reversal of signs,
Personality active and Essence passive to Personality passive and
Essence active—such a man belongs to Conscious Humanity and such
a man can do. He is re-born. Such a man has real Fate, for Fate is of
Essence, and mechanical law belongs to machines—that is, to us.
Ordinary man is under Accident, not Fate. Now we realize what is
meant by the positive idea "Man cannot do", when we begin to become
conscious of our own mechanicalness. A machine does not do. It has
no choice. This is one of the definite increases of consciousness possible
for us and expected after a certain time. Time is measured in the
Work. This Work is about increasing consciousness in many definite
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directions. Consciousness is light—not physical light but psychological
light, which gives a new power of seeing everything. As Man is, he is
in darkness—quite literally. He is in psychological darkness. He is not
conscious. To realize—to begin to realize—that one is mechanical
and not really alive is a shock. This shock belongs to the zone which
in the 3-storey factory, fed by impressions, air and food, is called
the region of the First Conscious Shock. This shock a man can
give himself. Here he can do. Man can work—with the help of the
Work. But first he must form Observing 'I'. Observing 'I' is the result
of this Work and of the ideas taught by it. The more you see the
strength of the Work the more you can observe. Only through the
Observing 'I' formed by this Work and its positive ideas can a man
observe himself deeply enough to realize his mechanicalness as a psychological fact. He then sees that the whole matter and meaning of life lies
in himself and his relation to himself. Hitherto he has been identified
with what is not him—with Personality—and so not with his Fate.
Now he begins to separate. In short, he begins to awaken from sleep,
from Personality active. So the realization that he is a machine and
that he cannot do has a positive result, although it seems a negative idea.
It brings him a step toward that reversal, that interchange of signs
between Personality and Essence. For we have tentatively defined a
positive idea as that which lessens Personality and increases Essence.
So let us again refer to the great diagram—the condensed formulation—of what is necessary if we wish this Work and no longer believe in
life as an end in itself.
991
One can see without difficulty that a reversal is necessary for a man
to be "re-born"—or reach his inherently possible development. For
according to the Work everyone is born a self-developing organism—
that is, capable of a further step, individually, in his evolution. But for
life-purposes—i.e. to serve Nature—this is not necessary. Man asleep
serves Nature. The Side-Octave from the Sun—that is, from that
internal psychological level represented physically and externally by the
natural and quite dramatic Sun—has sown Man on Earth to contribute
to the pain-factory of Organic Life, but has given Man the inherent
possibility of raising his level of Being in such a way that although he,
as a body, is on the Earth, psychologically he is at a higher level. The
psychological man, that is, is at a higher level. As you know, a man is
first his body and then his psychological body. The Work is always
making the second psychological body and for this new ideas and the
practice of them are necessary. Now all the ideas of the Work are
positive in exactly this sense—namely, if followed they lead to the
formation of a psychological body. As Man is, from the action of
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external life, he has no organized psychological body. His level of
being and his knowledge are such that internally, psychologically, he is
Legion—a mass of contradictory 'I's—a multiplicity—in fact, a machine
run by external life—a machine which is a function of the outside and
has no inner life of its own. All this cannot be pondered on enough.
You have heard it, but not seen it. You have listened to it but not
found secretly what it means. I will only add that if you value the
Work and do not nibble at it, if you feel it emotionally, you will very
soon know what the 3rd Force of life is and what the 3rd Force of the
Work is. That is, you will get to know practically what it is to be
mechanical and what it is to begin to behave consciously. When you
know this as a psychological fact for yourselves, then you will know
when you are behaving as a man, a woman, asleep, and when you are
behaving as a man, a woman, beginning to awaken from the general
sleep of Humanity. And so you will begin to see what this reversal of
Signs implies and understand practically what this ancient idea of
"being re-born" means.
Great Amwell House, January 25, 1947
MAGNETIC CENTRE AND POSITIVE IDEAS
It has been often said in the teaching of this Work that one of the
signs of Being in a person is the possession of Magnetic Centre, which
signifies the power of seeing things on different levels. A sense of scale
in regard to the meaning of Magnetic Centre has nothing to do with a
mechanical sense of scale. For example, an emotional type—e.g. an
artist—has a sense of scale about art and usually a very jealous one.
Or an intellectual man, a No. 3 man, has a sense of scale about intel
lectual things, and again is very jealous. But this is not the scale that
Magnetic Centre gives, which is a scale outside life. For example, let
us take a No. 1 man, who judges everything from the viewpoint of
physical prowess. He meets a No. 2 man who is, say, an artist. He feels
nothing from this artist because he has no sense of scale. He cannot
understand that this artist, who perhaps contributes to the culture of
life, is superior to him, because he judges him from his physical power,
and so on. That is, he sees nothing higher than himself except in visible
people who are taller or shorter or more powerful than himself. So he
derives his feeling of scale from the physical senses. Magnetic Centre,
however, means the power of seeing beyond our mechanical fixations.
It means the power of seeing that there is something far higher than
oneself—whether one is No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 man.
Speaking in general, a man who possesses Magnetic Centre is at a
higher level than one who does not—because he can see higher and
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lower. There are, however, different qualities of Magnetic Centre.
Sometimes people have what Mr. Ouspensky called false Magnetic
Centre—and sometimes they have multiple Magnetic Centre—that is,
they have many small, weak Magnetic Centres. As a result, they run
after every variety of magical and pseudo-occult practice, every kind of
mystical cult, or even join end-of-the-world societies, or spend their time
in measuring dark passages in the Pyramids and explaining everything
by them. Such people have no right sense of scale. Right Magnetic
Centre does not lead in this direction. But both in a man with wrong
or false Magnetic Centre and a man with right Magnetic Centre, there
is the belief that there is something else, another idea of life, and that life
cannot be explained in terms of itself. This is a positive idea. Now Man,
being created a self-developing organism, as the Work says, cannot fulfil
himself unless he finds out how to develop. He may feel he cannot
explain the Universe or that he cannot explain himself, or both. In
any case, the sense of mystery enters. This feeling, this continual awareness of the inexplicability of everything is one of the signs of right
Magnetic Centre. Curiosity, ambition to be great, the excitingness of
so-called occult knowledge and the belief that one can get something for
nothing have to do with small 'I's and with the self-emotions. But the
sense of mystery goes beyond all self-love. It decreases Personality. It
makes a man feel his nothingness. So it connects him with positive
ideas, for anything that renders Personality more passive and Essence
more active has connection with positive ideas. For this reason God, as
Absolute, is a positive idea. The Ray of Creation is a positive idea.
The Conscious Circle of Humanity is a positive idea. The idea that we
are all asleep and must awaken is a positive idea.
Let us recall once more the teaching of the Work about Magnetic
Centre. It says that Magnetic Centre brings us into the Work but
cannot keep us there without our own efforts. We have to work on
ourselves and in contact with a system that tells us how we have to work.
We have to will this Work. To attempt to do this Work—such as the
practising of non-identifying—without willing the Work cannot give any
result. Will starts from affection. Will, if you come to think of it, is
love. One emotion can overcome another if strong enough. The centre
of gravity of Will lies in the Emotional Centre. It is worth reflecting on
this oneself. But although a man may have right Magnetic Centre,
which should lie in the intellectual part of the Emotional Centre, it is
only introductory. If he is led to a teaching connected with the Conscious Circle of Humanity by means of it, his task is only begun. He
has to turn his sense of mystery, his seeking, his cravings, his lack, into
something real—-into practical and practised work, and the more he
values emotionally the more he is given help. If he has the strength to
catch the rope overhead then not only is he working but the Work
works on him. It begins to teach him, in periods of silence, in those gaps
in one's mechanical life when usually everything is a blank or boredom.
Above all, it enters when one has separated—that is, not identified—with
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one of the hundred and one daily things that keep us asleep and seem
so great through identifying, which is an enormous magnifying lens.
People like to make a problem of everything, to be worried, and, like
flies, get stuck on every little fly-paper-event. One may have no idea
how it is possible to avoid these fly-papers—that is, unless one takes the
Work simply and applies it simply, almost at every moment. What an
up-rolling of care can then take place and how these things adjust
themselves and fall into their right place.
Diagram of Magnetic Centre
Some people do not distinguish the difference between A and B
influences. They take everything in life in the same way and on the
same level. Others recognize B influences and are affected by them and
a few even make an effort to find out more. This is due to the quality
of Magnetic Centre. They seek. Only a few seek from themselves.
Memory, due to recurrence, may make Magnetic Centre very strong
from earliest times. In a sense, contact with the Work may create
Magnetic Centre in those who seem not to possess it. If so, in recurrence, they will recognize the Work when they hear it again, for everything repeats, everything returns, in the circle of one's life. However,
the Work simply says that Magnetic Centre is acquired and is due to
the early influences a child has been under. To-day it is ceasing to
exist—that is, the level of Humanity is dropping. Positive ideas, in the
Work-meaning, are being replaced by negative ideas. As a consequence,
all those higher parts of centres, that we are furnished with just because
we are self-developing organisms, are not made contact with, not used,
not given food. Man more and more is living in the basement—not
merely literally—and in consequence change of Being is being made
impossible, for only positive ideas can change Being. Since change of
Being—that is, self-development—is the real idea of Man by his
creation, his individual meaning is being lost. If we change Being, even
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a little, as not disliking so easily, not identifying with every worry, our
life alters. Unless we change Being the taste of our life and our actual
life-situations remain nearly the same. Without positive ideas—that is,
without contact with C influences via B influences—all the real meaning
of Man perishes. He is cut off from influences that could change him.
So he becomes wholly under the power of A influences. He then serves
life and the big machines of life—politics, trade, war, mass-exercise,
mass-propaganda, etc. He will not possess Magnetic Centre. He will
not seek positive ideas. His inner mind is shut. His inner life dies, and,
esoterically speaking, he becomes useless, meaningless, dead. Much was
said in the Gospels about the quick and the dead and many warnings
were given about Man being cut off, which can be understood far more
distinctly from the Work-ideas. On the other hand, a culture comes to
an end, and has to be destroyed, and the flood comes—namely,
barbarism, violence, loss of truth. Then an Ark is made to survive the
Flood and keep alive knowledge for the next culture. What do you
think of this time in the light of these ideas?
Great Amwell House, February 1, 1947
OUR RELATIONSHIP TO PSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE
STATE = PLACE
Some of you have heard it said that while everyone is somewhere in
physical space, at the same time he or she is somewhere in psychological
space. It is obvious that a living person as regards the physical, visible
body must be somewhere in physical space—in some distinct place. But
unless you reflect on the matter, it is not so obvious that everyone is at
the same time in some distinct place in psychological space. Outwardly,
by our external senses, we can observe where we or others are in visible
space. This Work is to train us to observe where we are internally—in
this psychological space that all esoteric teaching is about. Each of us
dwells somewhere in a vast psychological country, the same for everyone.
In this inner psychological space, only apprehended by the inner senses,
it is possible for a man or woman to spend their lives in a very bad part
of it, without ever realizing it. In the Work we seek to change our
habitat internally. For example, the cultivation of negative emotions,
the love of negative states in general, puts us in a bad part of this vast,
inner psychological space where the spirit of a person dwells. That is,
we can live physically in comfort and psychologically in a wretched
part which, if it were represented by visible space, we would be horrified
at and seek to leave at once. Suppose a person's favourite, most habitual
psychological activity consists in internal considering, in blaming, in
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making accounts against others, in violence, in feeling upset by every
life-event, in being negative and so on, then such a person inhabits
psychologically, spiritually, a bad place internally. He or she dwells,
inwardly, in a bad place, however healthily outwardly. How then to
get out of it? First, by observing that it is so and acknowledging it. Then
by work on oneself on non-identifying with one's states. Remember
State is Place in this inner invisible realm which is psychological space.
Whatever state you are in, there you place yourself. Suppose you have
mean, narrow thoughts and instantly you were to find yourself physically
in a mean, narrow street. That would certainly give you a shock. This
does not happen in physical space—and just as well. But it happens in
psychological space always and instantly. So reflect again on the saying
that State is Place internally. Whatever state you are in, so you are in a
certain place internally, psychologically. This must become as real to
you as what would be corresponding in outer space—where at least we
learn not to walk in mud and filth. Negative emotions are mud and
filth. Psychologically, they correspond to literal mire and filth.
As has been said several times, we live in what is invisible to others.
Our bodies are in visible space, but our thoughts and moods and fears
and anxieties and feelings are invisible and constitute where we dwell
in the psychological world. It is in this psychological world that we
really live. So it has been said that we are all invisible. Through our
visible bodies we try to signal to one another in a clumsy way. But
actually we are invisible and nearly unknown to one another. This is
very strange. Yet the more you reflect on it, the more will you see that
it is true. We do not live in the external sense-given outer world, but in
an invisible, inner psychological world. If we are in the same place in
the psychological world, however, we understand our signals better and
perhaps even do not have to signal in the usual manner. That is one
reason why this Work teaches us to learn a common language and
practise a common work, a common discipline. Then we are closer in
psychological space. In this space, in this psychological or spiritual
world, there are definite places where it is possible to receive help. I do
not think, as we are, that it is possible to be in two places at the same
time, either in the world of physical space or the world of psychological
space. In this connection the Works says merely that it is impossible to
cross a river in two boats. When one comes in contact with a teaching
that comes from a particular psychological place, that has been reached
by others who have laboured in the past, then if the teaching is valued
and followed it leads to that place where, on the way, one begins to get
help. Another reality and another meaning begin to shew through what
one has hitherto taken to be the only reality and meaning. Every form
of esoteric or inner teaching is a way to a place. For example, Christ
calls himself a Way. Only when it is followed to the end can a person
be transformed into a Christian. Yet people begin by imagining they
are Christians.
Now if a man has no Magnetic Centre, no sense of scale, and there997
fore no positive ideas, he cannot reach those desirable parts of this
psychological country of which we have been speaking. What in our
machine, our apparatus, corresponds and relates us to this country?
Centres and parts of centres do. They open into different places.
Higher parts and lower parts of centres touch different levels in this
psychological country—for it is a country of levels, higher and lower,
valleys and mountains. For example, if one lives in little 'I's, in
negative 'I's, in minute thoughts, in minute self-feelings and selfsatisfactions, and so on, one lives in poor dismal valleys internally. State
is Place. Bad states put a man, a woman, in bad psychological places.
It is just like that—just as practical as that. But it is worth thinking
about often—that is, once you begin to feel, even faintly, responsible to
yourself or your states and cease to say, or think secretly, that it is
somebody else's fault. "Remember", the Work says, "that you come
here to contend only with yourself. Thank any who give you the opportunity to do so." But it is not only a question of coming here—the idea
runs through all the Work, wherever you are—"work on yourself",
whether here or elsewhere. Observe yourself. Consider what the Work
tells you to observe. Then work on yourself through the material you
have collected by observation. But people identify so much with their
states. Something makes a person, say, feel miserable. Does it occur to
the person that this is exactly where one can work? No—the person
simply is miserable, totally identified with the mood. Whereas an inner
relaxing, an observing of the thoughts and the feelings and the posture,
a remembering of something said in the Work, and perhaps in a flash
the mood has vanished or perhaps it gradually lifts. Why? Because you
are observing it and so are not it. But if you want the state and enjoy
it in this curious way that we do—that is, love our negative states—then
how can it disappear? So many will misery or anxiety. To love is to
will: we do what we love to do. To be negative and to hate are easy:
to hate to be negative is difficult. First, we must feel that in this Work
we have a right not to be negative. That is a very deep remark. It is
not the same as saying that in the Work we have no right to be negative.
The pain-factory of life demands negative states from sleeping Humanity. Only the Work gives us the right not to be negative. The Work has
paid for us in that respect. Others have paid. Is it not a pity that we
cannot observe our evil states instead of being them and taking them as
ourselves? How shall we ever find the principle of unity in ourselves if
we take our changing states as 'I'? To do so seems to me not to understand the Work—not to see where it begins. The Work begins in you
—not outside you. It begins in studying where you are now in this inner
psychological space. It is not merely that the Kingdom of Heaven is
within you. This has many mansions. It is to see where you are now
internally. The Work shews you where you are. This is self-study. This
is practical work.
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Great Amwell House, February 8, 1947
A NOTE ON SELF-JUSTIFYING
One of the many definite things we are told by this Work to observe
in ourselves, and specifically to work against, is self-justifying. What
does self-justifying mean? It means always putting yourself in the right.
To justify one's action, for example, is to vindicate oneself, to shew to
others that whatever one did, it was reasonable, right, proper and just.
When you justify yourself, you start from the picture of yourself as
always good, honourable, just, upright. To justify oneself is to
exonerate
oneself, to explain to people how one was not to blame, how one was
misunderstood, how one acted from the best motives, and so on. If you
have begun to observe self-justifying, you will realize what a prodigious
quantity of psychic energy is used every moment by the human race in
this useless activity. The man or woman can never be wrong. People
feel themselves always right, whatever they do or say. Nothing penetrates them. Nothing can rouse them from the deep sleep in which
they prefer to exist. This becomes a serious matter, however, if a
person wishes to awaken.
Now it is useless to speak of self-justifying to people unless they have
tried to observe it in themselves. Suppose a person is suddenly asked
why he is so negative? Probably he will either indignantly deny that
he is negative or say that he has good reason to be. In both cases, he
justifies himself—that is, he justifies his negative emotions. You can
justify yourself by denial, or by finding an excuse such as blaming
others. But the root of the matter lies in this picture of always being
right and so never being actually in the wrong. Here a very powerful
force is at work to keep us asleep in illusions about ourselves. As a
consequence, we are then never at peace internally. On the contrary,
we are at war—with ourselves. For there is that in us that knows we
are in the wrong and that in us that refuses to admit it. Here the two
Giants, Pride and Vanity, come in, but it seems to me that it is chiefly
Pride. But that is a matter for personal observation. Vanity may make
pictures of oneself and Pride defend them. But whatever the case is,
the fact remains that some very powerful force lies behind the act of
self-justifying and that this force does not give us any inner stability and
so no inner peace. A man or woman may, say, not sleep all night simply
because of something they will not admit and accept, and instead they
justify themselves. Yet one real act of uncritical, sincere self-observation, one search through their inner rooms for the missing piece of silver
—that is, the missing truth—will clear everything up. The tension
relaxes. A real act of self-observation has been made. Something not
admitted and so not properly conscious has been allowed to become
fully conscious. All inner strain and tightness suddenly vanishes. Why?
Because instead of the crowding voices of self-justifying—and here it is
oneself justifying oneself to oneself—observation, acknowledgement and
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acceptance have been carried out. In other words, an act of real work
has been done. The pill has been swallowed.
Let me talk once more of this pill that Sly Man makes and swallows
in the 4th Way. Sly Man does not sit on his haunches for years with
his arms outstretched. He does not starve for weeks or deep-breathe for
days. He observes himself and sees what he has to do with himself now
to change his machinery—his present Being. He is clever—like the wise
virgins in the parable. (In the Greek the word translated as "wise"
means "clever".) He works on what it is immediately necessary to
acknowledge and accept in himself without Pride or Vanity. So he is
sly, clever, intelligent. He makes a pill and swallows it. Now if he
always justifies himself, how can he make this pill and swallow it? The
Sly Man does not strive to keep up with himself as he imagines he is.
He notices distinctly that he lies, for example. He observes it over a
period and does not seek to disguise it to himself, to justify himself. He
notices it, sees it, acknowledges it, accepts it, and so swallows this
particular pill. Then he must digest it. It tastes bitter in the mouth.
But once digested it becomes sweet.
When we justify ourselves nothing comes home to us. We keep, as
it were, a half of ourselves from entering consciousness. We live on one
side. This is due to those extraordinarily difficult things to observe
called in the Work buffers. The more buffers, the more self-justifying.
But once the other side of a buffer is observed, acknowledged and
accepted, the buffer can never re-form itself. We lose a particular idea
of ourselves. We gain a broadening of consciousness. Thereby we reach
a higher level of Being. This seems paradoxical. It seems paradoxical
to say that if you will accept what you disapprove of you reach a higher
level. People imagine that by increasing their sense of self-merit and
virtue, they get higher. On the contrary, they descend. This is worth
thinking about.
Great Amwell House, February 15, 1947
NOTE ON TAKING IN NEGATIVE IMPRESSIONS
When you take in a negative impression it increases and Force in
you. You can say simply that it makes everything more difficult. People
often make difficulties about everything—in fact, making difficulties
may belong to their Chief Feature. Every person has a Chief Feature,
on which everything rests. It is compared with a central axle round
which everything in the man or woman turns. When a person tries to
forget himself and only remember what his aim is, Chief Feature interferes. In every decision, Chief Feature decides. In short, in regard to
changing oneself, changing one's Being, it constitutes the greatest 2nd
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Force in us. Every manifestation is the meeting-point of three forces.
First, Second, and Third Force. First Force is called active and 2nd
Force is force of resistance to active force, or opposing force. This
2nd Force is in all things, even in the imagination and phantasy where
at least we might suppose we can do as we like. But for this force of
resistance, everything would be without restraint, without brakes, without the necessity of effort, without form—but to say this is absurd, for
nothing that exists, nothing that manifests itself, is without 2nd Force.
Now when a man makes as his aim change of himself, his Chief Feature
stands up as 2nd Force to resist him. But people do not see that they
have 2nd Force in themselves. They see it always as outside themselves.
Let us return to the opening remark. I said that when you take in
a negative impression, it increases 2nd Force. Let us try to see why this
is so and how as a result it can hold people back in the Work without
their realizing what it is that does this. I mean that a person in this
Work, the object of which is increase of consciousness and so change of
Being, cannot proceed beyond a certain point unless they halt negative
impressions of others. In the first place, taking in and accepting
negative impressions of others, of life, of everything, feeds the negative
part of Emotional Centre. This part of Emotional Centre has to be
starved, because it is like a disease in the Emotional Centre. The
Emotional Centre, if a man or woman works against this acquired part,
can transmit meaning from Higher Emotional Centre. You can call it
inspiration, meaning, worth-whileness, something different from life,
some inner source of life and of being happy—a weak word—and yet
quite true. Since we were all born amongst sleeping people—since Papa
and Mamma and all the rest were asleep, we become infected by negative emotions. We inhale the atmosphere of those around us from birth
—and people are negative and governed by negative emotions. So in
our acquired Personality we have formed in us a spurious centre called
the negative part of Emotional Centre. At birth the Emotional Centre
has no negative part. So we acquire negative emotions. This is a
blessed business, because if negative emotions were born in the essential
Emotional Centre, we could never separate from them. That is the
teaching and you can see what it means if you reflect. The validity of
being negative is not essential. It is a matter of the acquired Personality
and so a disease. So you begin to see perhaps after many years what it
means when it is said that we have a right not to be negative. This is
a marvellous insight—a real awakening—a beginning of change of
Being.
Now when we take in and accept a negative impression of another
person it increases the strength over us of the negative part of Emotional
Centre. But not only that. It comes back on us—namely, that representation of the person in us becomes negative. Each person we know
exists in us as a representation as well as outside us as an object of the
senses. The external world is reflected in us through the senses via the
nervous system, the nerves and their impulses, and represented in us as
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people, things. If you take in a negative impression of a person that
you know well, that person in you becomes negative to you. For example,
you say you love X. Then you see X and think how silly he is. X in you
then becomes negative. You may have a nightmare about X—how he
hates you and wishes to murder you. Why? Because you have murdered X in yourself. So taking in negative impressions of others
increases 2nd Force in you. It increases enemies in you. It can become
a serious matter in the Work to take in negative impressions of others
in the Work.
Now if you have cleared a portico, a hall, a space in yourself by selfobservation so that you can see a negative impression coming in and
are able not to let it enter freely, not to identify with it, not let it go
where it wishes, not say 'I' to it, then you keep clear of the mechanical
result of that impression. This is magic. This place is what all must
make in their inner world. It is just as if we open the physical door in
the external world and find an evil man and let him in—or shut the
door and lock it. It is just the same thing in the internal world. But if
we may not have made this clearing, this portico, not made doors and
locks, we are at the mercy of outer life, having nothing in us to
prevent its continual effect. But when you realize that outer life and
people and things come in only as impressions, via the senses, then if you
have made this inner space or clearing in yourself, you can allow to
enter and accept some of these impressions and reject others. This is
taking impressions in consciously. This is called the First Conscious Shock—
when a man, a woman, begins to be a man, or woman, for the first
time—whatever they are mechanically in life. This is the beginning of
being Conscious Man. Now if you take in and accept the endless, jealous,
envious, unhappy, and so negative impressions of events of daily life
and other people, you are just a mechanical person—although you may
be a General or Prime Minister. You are a function of life, driven by
life. There is really nothing conscious in you. So the Work says you
have no psychology. "How can a machine have psychology?" said G.
"Machines are machines, some good, some bad. A man must begin to
awaken before I can speak to him of psychology. As he is mechanical,
whoever he is, I cannot speak to him. Psychology refers to real people.
Ordinary people, people in life, who have been made by life, whoever
they are, are machines. What psychology ", he emphasized this word,
"can there be in relation to machines? For the study of machines,
mechanics is necessary, not psychology. That is why we begin with
mechanics. It is yet a long way to psychology. We begin with the study
of the machine—of the man-machine, of the man who has the illusion
he is not a machine."
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Great Amwell House, February 22, 1947
ON REALIZING THAT ONE IS NOT CONSCIOUS
On one occasion Mr. Ouspensky was speaking of the various
attempts made by the Conscious Circle of Humanity to raise mankind
to a higher level of Being. He said in so many words: "But for the work
done on mankind by conscious men we would be nothing but barbarians. Always behind culture is the threat of barbarism and always
conscious men are sowing, at intervals, influences into the world to lift
Man above the state of barbarism. These efforts take different outer
forms, and can only be given at times, but always are the same eventually." He said G. had spoken of teachings in the past based on faith,
on hope and on love. G. had said: "All these systems have had their
influence on mankind at different periods of history. Faith, hope and
love have all been tried. But if you were to ask me about this system,
I would answer you by saying that it is based on consciousness. In this
system that I teach the emphasis is not on faith, or hope, or love, but on
consciousness. For this reason I begin by saying that Man is not yet
conscious, although he believes he is. He believes he is conscious. He
believes that all he does and says is done and said in a full state of
consciousness. But this is not the case. Western psychology, as contrasted with Eastern psychology, starts from the idea that Man as he
is is fully conscious and that there is no further state of consciousness
possible for him. This is where Western psychology is at fault. A man,
as he is, is not fully conscious. What he calls consciousness is not, in my
sense, consciousness. From the standpoint of the system that I teach,
Man is in the illusion that he is already conscious, whereas actually he
is in a state of sleep and he lives his whole life in a state of sleep."
At some other time G. spoke of hope as a basis of teaching. "People",
he said, in so many words, "may base themselves on hope. They hope
for after-life, or they hope that some promised Messiah will come and
do everything for them. But they do all this in a state of sleep. They do
not understand that all real teaching about Man and his possibilities
refers to the actual state of Man now—as he is and what he can become
—and not to some future state or some eventual progress. For that
reason if you ask me what this Work promises, I will answer you by
saying that it promises nothing. A man must begin by realizing what he
actually is now. He is not yet conscious. When he sees this, he must
begin by remembering himself. If a man could remember himself he
would be at a higher level of consciousness. He would be no longer
asleep. As a result, many illusions would fall away from him and everything would appear in a new light. If he went on he would reach a state
of consciousness above that of Self-Remembering—the state of Objective
Consciousness. In that state he would see things as they really are. He
would then be awake. A man can merely hope for Objective Consciousness, but hope will not give it him. He has to work on himself here and
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now, and not hope that he will be given it in some other existence. So
this system promises nothing. But if a man works, he will get something.
Let us say, he will receive leather with which to make shoes. But he
must make the shoes himself, so that they fit him. They must be his
own shoes—not borrowed shoes."
Let us speak to-day about not being properly conscious. You know
that it is impossible to understand the Work without doing it. One hears
that one is not properly conscious and hears it again. One may then
think that one knows all about that matter. Yet one understands absolutely nothing about it. Why? Because one has not observed and so
seen for oneself that one is not properly conscious. Here a curious state
exists. One still has the illusion that one is fully conscious and says and
does everything consciously and behaves consciously at every moment
and then one hears from the teaching of the Work that one is not
conscious. The two teachings lie in the mind without arousing just what
should be aroused in oneself. This happens because a person does not
apply what the Work teaches to himself or herself. People just listen to
the Work and nod their heads. They may hear it a little. But it is
necessary to hear and do the Work. When by uncritical observation of
yourself, instead of this heart-rending continual critical observation of
others, you notice that you speak without being really conscious of what
you are saying, and all the rest of it, you begin practically to realize that
you are not properly conscious. You see the truth of the Work internally. If the whole world were properly conscious all wars, political lies
and so on would cease. Can you catch a glimpse of what it might mean
to live amongst more conscious people? Can you see why you cannot?
Can you see that an increase of consciousness, which is the goal of the
Work, and which begins by making yourself more conscious of yourself
to yourself by self-observation, would lead to an entirely different life?
Here, for instance, you always get offended or hurt or in a rage or
depressed because of a constantly recurring trivial situation. Others will
tell you that you always mechanically (that is, not consciously) behave like
that. But you won't believe it. You will justify yourself. In other words,
you will refuse to become more conscious of yourself, of what you are
like. Once we see for ourselves a thing recurring in ourselves through
the inner sense of self-observation, we are gradually freed, gradually
made less and less under its power. Why?—through the increase of consciousness. All increase of consciousness renders mechanical behaviour
less dominating. Consciousness is light. Mechanicalness is darkness.
Things happen in the dark that cannot happen in the light. Selfobservation is to let a ray of light into all that which we take for granted
—namely, the illusion that we are fully conscious and always behave
consciously. What an illusion! Can you think of a greater one?
Now as regards doing this Work and not merely listening to it—to
do this Work requires effort. Only people make a great mistake in
thinking, for example, that effort means that they should get up earlier
or dig all day or give up smoking and all that. Effort in the Work is
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psychological. It is all about not identifying and Self-Remembering.
Effort in the Work is all about observing oneself—observing 'I's in
oneself and not going with them. Effort in the Work is about being
sincere to oneself and so knowing what one's motives really are, and not
pretending. Effort in the Work is about remembering oneself and not
becoming at every moment identified with everything and everybody.
Effort in the Work is to stop inner talking. Effort in the Work is not to
let negative impressions fall where they mechanically would fall. Effort
in the Work is not to pile up internal accounts against others, but to try
to see in yourself what you blame in others—as, for example, unkindness. All effort in the Work is passive. Self-development starts from
passive Do. Effort is something very quiet and deep and clearly seen.
It is not noisy, not pretence. It is not contracting muscles and thrusting
chins out. Effort in the Work is about effort on your inner states,
where you are in your psychological country. All effort in the Work
is about becoming more conscious of yourself to yourself. All effort in
the Work is about seeing where you are inside—in what place internally
in this vast psychological country—and separating yourself from the
innumerable bad places in that country. Remember that to move away
from a bad inner state is only possible by non-identifying. An ordinary
mechanical man or woman is totally identified with his or her inner
state at each moment. A person who begins to work begins by knowing
what it means to non-identify with the bad 'I's that inhabit those states
—those 'I's in you that live in slums. He then begins to know what the
Work means and therefore what can lead to change of Being. If you
believe in all your states and moods and thoughts and feelings, if you
say 'I' to all your 'I's, then you are totally identified with yourself and
so are not properly conscious of yourself. To be conscious of a state,
to observe it, means you are not that state. This is the secret—the first
secret of esotericism. Yet people say: "How can I change my Being?"
Hear and do the Work. Do and practise what it teaches on yourself.
Then you will get gradually to another level of Being. So think what
practical work is clearly taught in this Work. Begin with what the
Work tells you to begin with, and so do not keep asking: "What shall
I do to change my Being?" The Work tells you how to begin. But have
you ever thought of following it practically—of actually doing it now?
The subject of this Work is not the blackboard: it is you yourself. You
are the subject of the Work. How many times have you been negative
to-day? And how many times have you noticed it and not identified
with it ? Have you lifted yourself even once to-day out of your mechanical
moods? Even an act of noticing a negative state, of observing that you
are negative or speaking negatively, separates you a little. Sometimes
this moment of self-observation will change you for the moment completely. A sufficient number of such Work-moments may change you,
not for a moment, but for all your life. "Nothing", said Mr. Ouspensky,
"is more easy and more useless than to be [negative all day long. People
get negative, say, because life is not going as they think it should. If
1005
they only understood they would know that life is going in the only way
it can and that nobody can do. This realization might help them. Of
what use is it to expend all one's energy in being negative about life
when it is all happening in the only way it can happen? This is sleep."
Great Amwell House, March 1, 1947
WORK ON UNDEVELOPED FUNCTIONS
One can use life or be used by it. When a man is used by life he is
food, used by a plane of life below that of Earth. Everything is food for
something else. Everything feeds on something else. When a man uses
life consciously, he becomes food for a plane above the level of the
Earth. The reason is that if a man lives more and more consciously he
develops, whereas if he is used by life he does not develop. The illustration employed in the Work is that if an acorn lies and rots on the ground
it is eaten by pigs, but if it grows into a tree it has another destiny.
Oak can be used—eaten—to make a house, but not acorns.
To develop, a man, a woman, must cease to be one-sided, cease to
live in one small part of vast centres. Everyone who is in any sense near
the level of Good Householder—that is, who has some reasonable,
responsible, trained adaptation to external life—has a small developed
part that is used for everything. It is like using a saw for everything,
such as driving in nails, or writing. To develop is to become less and less
one-sided. One must explore one's own country and travel abroad in
it—yes, go to Paris in oneself, let us say. Unfortunately people get fixed
and stiff and do not get behind themselves, so that they may see where
and how they have got stuck to one thing, one idea, one picture of
themselves, one point of view, one outlook, one set of phrases, and one
judgment on everything. For the first half of life or so, the function
most used by the acquired Personality that relates them to the world is
sufficient. They remain apparently well. A time comes when the other
functions belonging to the other centres need expression. That is, the
machine urgently needs balancing. The unused functions begin to
project themselves on to others. One's own limitations are seen as being
only in others. So they have to be brought into consciousness and thus
prevented from unconsciously going out into others. Undeveloped
thinking, for instance, needs to be observed and made more and more
conscious to oneself. I am speaking of a person in whom thinking is the
least-used centre—say, a 123 man. He will then see that it is not the
other person who is so intolerably stupid, but himself. Unless he does
this, the same situation will occur repeatedly. For what lies in us,
beyond our slight range of consciousness, acts very powerfully and quite
against our small sphere of will. So the Work emphasizes the impor1006
tance of increasing our consciousness of ourselves. Notice when you are
behaving in a way that surprises you. You may be sure that an
undeveloped centre is discharging energy through you—that is, discharging it in a silly infantile way. Infantile here means undeveloped.
People ask: "Is Essence bad?" It is not developed. A thing not
developed can be bad—impulsive. When developed it passes into its
own intelligence and use. Everything in us not developed—that has
never been given a chance to develop—can act in an undifferential
way—in a purely violent, impulsive way—and so seem bad in itself.
It is not bad in itself. It is simply in prison.
As said, a man, a woman, may get on reasonably to a certain age
by means of the comparatively developed function in Personality. Then
the need for the recognition of the other sides becomes urgent—not in
human-animal types, but in people who have more in them. These
other sides require a new education. This Work is called a second
education. One of its main ideas is to open up other centres—to
become No. 4 Man—Balanced Man. But rigidity easily prevents this.
So one has to begin to think about this point. Even after, say, about 30,
one has to begin to see other sides of oneself and consider them. An
ordinary man is No. 1—in Moving Centre—or No. 2—in Emotional
Centre—or No. 3—in Intellectual Centre. In each case he will—or she
will—come to the end of that function in middle life and lose the way
—lose meaning. Then all sorts of troubles arise. The solution lies in
themselves. The Work is about this developing of undeveloped parts.
The dark side of us is not only what one refuses to admit about oneself,
but what one refuses to use. Each centre is a mind, giving a quite
different view. All the views are necessary. So a man must work on
not only what he is now in this small one-sided being, and improve
that, but let in new ways of understanding and new interests. So here
we have and may have many things for people to do that in life they
would never dream of doing. There is Intellectual Centre, Emotional
Centre, Sex Centre, Moving Centre and Instinctive Centre. All should
co-operate successively in the full man or woman. Then there are no
contradictions.
This is a brief note, but if there are enough questions I will return
to it. I will add that the Work will make it possible for you to use new
growth in yourself, but life will not. Effort—to speak of it again—that
is right is to learn something new, understanding that thereby you will
open a new source of energy—a new centre. Personality puts a man in
prison eventually. He "dies" soon—psychologically. The Work begins
to get a man out of prison. But first he must be good at something.
That is why for some it is necessary only to work on considering,
negative emotions, and non-identifying, and not to try to take up what
does not lie in the direction of a person's first early contending with life.
The Work helps very much in life. Some intelligence is necessary.
Afterwards, it helps in another way. Work is different at different ages.
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Great Amwell House, March 8, 1947
FURTHER NOTE ON UNDEVELOPED FUNCTIONS
If we had all our ordinary centres developed our entire life would
be different. I am not speaking of Higher Centres for, as this Work
teaches, Higher Centres are fully developed and working in us all the
time. But we cannot hear them. We are non-receptive of their vibrations, our ordinary centres being both in a mess and also not rightly
developed. For example, the state of Emotional Centre is such that it
is impossible to hear the continual meanings coming from Higher
Emotional Centre and this is due to its being choked up with useless
negative emotions collected since early life chiefly by imitation.
Let us speak about the Instinctive Centre and what can be developed
in connection with it. One function of Instinctive Centre is sensation.
What would you conceive to be a development of sensation? Now
every function can be directed outwards and inwards—that is, be
connected with external attention or internal attention, to use the
Work-terms. Here I speak of a development of the function of sensation
when turned outwards. Suppose you never notice anything outside you
with any kind of precision. You never notice, say, how maps go, or the
shapes of different trees, or forms and arrangements of things. You
say: "I really cannot remember how it went exactly." In such a case
outer sensation is undeveloped. There was an exercise for this—noticing
a number of objects for a short time and then describing them in detail.
This develops attention in sensation, turned to an outer object. That is
also why drawing and painting are useful and can refresh one. The
use of a rarely-used function always refreshes. The constant use of the
same main function exhausts. There is a wealth of new ground in
everyone. But people will traverse the same worn paths. For this
reason the Work begins with change of thinking. "This Work," it is
said, and repeatedly said, "is to make you think in a new way. That is
the beginning of the whole matter." Now all the ideas of the Work, if
learnt and assimilated over a period of years, open up the mind in new
directions and alter one's whole way of viewing things. That is, this
Work develops a person's thinking. In fact, people learn to think. This
general idea stands at the head of all talks about functions and new
development of centres. The Work, by changing the thinking, makes it
possible for other changes to take place. If one's mind remains just the
same, if one's views and prejudices remain just the same, so will one's
thoughts remain just the same, and everything in oneself will be just
the same. The magic of the Work starts from new ideas for thinking
with. The Work begins by shifting the mind from its mechanically set
position. Everything else can then shift a little. Yet is it not strange
that people always think they can change if they wish. They imagine
they are free, but find excuses, not seeing that only a new force—a new
set of ideas—coming from another direction, can make it possible for
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any change to take place. So remember that in all these and subsequent
talks about development of centres, it is assumed that the first necessary
condition is fulfilled—namely, contact with a conscious teaching that
can make it possible to change the mind. I remind you again that the
Gospels start from μετάνοια—change of mind.
Let us take emotional perception. Some have this rather than perception through sensation. Emotional perception is connected with the
emotional parts of centres, especially with the intellectual part of
Emotional Centre. This is very quick and a thought perceived through
this part in a second may take many hours to write down. The intellectual part of Emotional Centre is open to Higher Emotional Centre
and capable of receiving in a fragmentary way its vibrations of higher
meaning. The working or vibrations of a psychic centre become conscious to us as meanings on different levels. Where with a lower centre
we see only one meaning, we see many interblending meanings with a
Higher Centre. Using our ordinary more or less mechanical parts of
centres we see very little meaning. That is why we feel a staleness in
experiences. But a flash of higher meaning, which, by work on oneself
according to what is taught, is always possible, gives an entirely new
range of meanings. We see things in a new way—our problems, and
so on. What was ordinary and dull seems transformed. This Work is
to transform impressions. So try not to see everything as you mechanically
do and not to identify with your usual way of taking things. Step aside
from your habit of seeing everything—first by noticing how you take things
daily. Each centre and part of a centre can see the same thing in quite
new ways. Now if all centres were working in us everything could be seen in
many different ways. Take thinking: thinking is a function of Intellectual
Centre. Now take feeling: feeling is a function of Emotional Centre—
it sees a thing, a problem, quite differently from the way in which
thinking does. The two are incompatible—that is, they can never meet.
One thinks about a situation: then one should if possible be able to feel
about the same situation. You will never bring thinking and feeling to
the same state or point of agreement. So each centre gives a different
interpretation of situations. One has then to learn to use both interpretations in this case. At this point the individuality emerges which can
take something from thinking and take something from feeling and
make some resultant, some harmony, some decision. This is the
harmonizing of the centres. But it is only possible by not identifying
with one centre and its functions and excluding the rest.
Is it not true that at different times the same problem looks different?
Do not think this is weakness of so-called will. It is the beginning of
growth—the seeing of the same situation from many sides. To follow
one function exclusively and its judgments—say, thinking—is to be a
slave to one centre—that is, to be one-sided. For that reason the Work
speaks of being Balanced Man, No. 4 Man—that is, a man in whom all
centres can be called on, with all their different meanings, their different
interpretations, of the situation. It is like a guitar with many strings.
1009
To pluck one all the time is not to reach any harmony. A Balanced
Man can reach his own harmony—seeing a thing through one centre
in this way, through another centre in a different way, and so on—and
making a resultant or harmony of all these different viewpoints. This
is Balanced Man. But an unbalanced man sees through only one
window, one part of a centre. He therefore has no breadth of Being.
He is narrow—a man using one tiny function for the whole meaning
and interpretation of life. Such a man may seem to have great strength
and inflexibility in life. Yet from the Work point of view he is the
weakest man, the most mechanical man, the most one-sided man. Onesidedness in the Work is a sign of weakness of Being.
Great Amwell House, March 22, 1947
PERSONAL REALIZATION
THAT ONE IS A MACHINE
On one occasion Mr. Ouspensky was speaking with his teacher. He
asked: "How can one stop being a machine?" The answer was: "Ah,
that is a real question. If you asked such questions more often we might
perhaps have got somewhere in our talks. It is possible to stop being a
machine, but for that two things are necessary. First, it is necessary to
know, to realize, that one is a machine, and second, to know the
machine itself and its possibilities. A machine, an actual machine, does
not know itself and cannot know itself. If an actual machine were to
know it is a machine it would then no longer be a machine." Such
conversations were always about the fact that Man as he is, asleep and
driven by life, is a machine without seeing it, without realizing it, but
that if a man begins to observe himself and to become conscious of
himself he can eventually cease to be a machine. In this teaching, this
double view of Man is always emphasized—mechanical Man and Conscious Man. All those scientific doctrines that teach that Man is a
machine are correct. But where they cease to be correct is in not understanding that Man can cease to be a machine and become conscious.
As was said, an actual machine, say, an engine, cannot ever know it is
a machine, and so must remain the machine that it is until it is worn
out and broken up. Scientists may create a robot—but not a conscious
one. "There is not a single theory about Man," O. once said, "that
has not its truth. The theory that Man is a machine is true on one
scale. It is relatively true. But it is not true on all scales. To see all
truth, to see the whole truth, or to begin to see what people call the
whole truth, is a matter of seeing scale, and this requires a development
of consciousness far beyond the so-called waking consciousness that Man
takes as full consciousness. In the light of full consciousness what
1010
ordinarily appears as contradictory ceases to do so. Things fall into
their right places in scale." "What is a sign of a development of consciousness?" I asked him. He said: "As I said, a development of
consciousness means the power of being able to think in different
categories, to see things on different scales and so to think in different
categories." He went on to speak of Man himself being on different
scales and how the taking of mankind as all similar, on the same level,
was a sign of undeveloped consciousness. As I remember that conversation with him very clearly I will give some of the rest of what he
said. Looking across at me he said: "You do not realize different
categories of thinking, different scales, different being. You take people
too much as the same. You know this Work divides mankind into seven
kinds of Man. Men No. 1, 2 and 3 are machines. They are each onesided in their own way. Man No. 4 is balanced. Men No. 5, 6 and 7
are conscious. As long as you think as you tend to do, you will not be
able to understand this. I mean, that unless your thinking changes,
your consciousness will not change and you will then tend to take things
on the same level, on the same scale, when actually they are utterly
different and have no connection." He went on to say how this power
of seeing that things are on different scales was essential for the gaining
of force from the Work and maintaining the strength of it in oneself.
"This," he said, "is what is meant by evaluation of the Work. Unless
it is constantly renewed the Work falls down to the ordinary level of
life and becomes drained of its force." I called it to myself afterwards
the vertical feeling of the Work. Scale is vertical—above and below.
All Self-Remembering should be accompanied by this feeling. The Ray
of Creation, when held in the mind, can by itself produce a change of
consciousness, because it is supremely a vertical diagram of scale, of
different categories, of different levels. What else can cure us of small
emotions and thoughts, which spread over the day like a fungus?
Let us now take the realization that one is a machine. Who yet has
begun to suspect that he or she is a machine? It begins when we can
take photographs of ourselves. A photograph is not a single observation
but a series of observations of oneself over a period. One becomes aware
of something separating from what hitherto was the undigested mass
of oneself, covered over with advertisements and pictures of oneself.
One is startled to catch a glimpse of this photograph which does not
correspond with any of the pictures one has used of oneself. Pictures of
oneself and photographs of oneself are totally different things. They
can never agree. One has possibly an uneasy moment. It is as if a
ray of light had got into the dark-room, where one spends one's time
in developing these often sad but always agreeable pictures, and thrown
an image of something unknown on the wall. "So I am not what I
thought," one mutters. Exactly. One now becomes negative in
many ways. For every moment of slightly increased consciousness,
every experience of seeing oneself as machinery—that is, of awakening
—is usually followed by a host of 'I's that wish to keep you in their
1011
power and make you fall asleep again. I am not speaking of those
moments of awakening that leave you silent, and even terrified.
Now this Work helps you according to where it is in you. It is
designed to be in the highest parts of centres. Here it can withstand
the attacks of negative 'I's and so a man can awaken eventually if he
renews his evaluation often. One must light a fire. It is bad to sleep
too long. Is it not true that we all have dangerous negative 'I's, so often
not quite detected, not seen for what they are, that seek to make us
"feed the Moon"—that is, follow the endless labyrinths of useless
suffering? Even the near presence of them can darken everything. So
one must work, search and find something able to resist—something
actually designed to break the power of them. Life made them and so
life cannot break them. That is why Man, seeking to awaken, must
have help from another source than life. As a machine formed by life
he will have the poison of negative states. All mechanical mankind has
this. Only Conscious Man can help him—the man who has given up
poisoning himself. All this Work coming from Conscious Man is to do
with breaking the wrong power of life over us. The worst power of life
is the infection of negative emotions. It is something quite terrible.
Have you yet reached that stage when you know it is quite terrible to
be negative—even quite quietly, to oneself? But the Work—that is,
conscious teaching—is stronger than life. If it were not, we would have
no culture on the Earth, no literature, no art, nothing civilized. Now
if one wishes to realize one side of one's mechanicalness, observe
negative states. This takes a very long time, because one keeps on
justifying them. If you justify everything in yourself, all you think and
feel and do, of course you will never see that you are a machine. Have
you realized this? Seeing that one is a machine therefore demands
not justifying. But that means letting go very much vanity and conceit
—many pictures, buffers, attitudes, etc. You see, therefore, that it is
complicated, one thing depending on another. One cannot just step
out of oneself and become a different person. But one thing helps here.
No one can endure the idea that he is a machine. That is one reason
why we justify ourselves. Scientists say we are machines—but if you
say to a scientist that he is a machine, he is annoyed. Now because we
have this feeling of dislike of being a machine, we have therefore something in us that does not wish to be a machine. This is an interesting
fact. Think about it for yourself. But next time we will speak more of
this machine that one is without knowing it—this typical way one has
of taking everything and responding to it typically like a machine. It
is quite wonderful to realize one need not be this typical life-stamped
machinery.
Do you think an ant, if asked, would admit it is a machine?
1012
Great Amwell House, March 29, 1947
MECHANICS AND PSYCHOLOGY
Last time a short commentary was read on realizing that one is a
machine. It was said that the realization that one is a machine and
that one acts mechanically is profoundly distasteful. The illusion that
we are fully conscious of everything we do or say is very strong. As a
result we justify even our most automatic behaviour. We explain away
everything—how we really meant to say this or do that. In this way
we avoid seeing in what way we are machines. For if you justify yourself in everything—that is, put yourself in the right—you will never
admit that you act quite mechanically and are not properly conscious.
Yet sincere, uncritical and direct self-observation will shew you that
you are not. This brings about a new emotional state. There are
certain emotional experiences that are necessary in the Work and they
come in a certain order and arise from contact with it over a sufficient
period. These emotional states overcome the emotions belonging to or
supporting False Personality. They are painful to the self-conceit and
self-valuation in general. It is, of course, the self-conceit that justifies
our mechanical behaviour and prevents us from seeing that we are
machines. G. once said: "One emotion can only be conquered by
another emotion." Now you might not suppose that glimpses of the
fact that one is a machine give rise to any useful emotion. On the
contrary, you might expect only negative emotions to arise. The strange
thing is that this is not the case. The feeling of helplessness and the
feeling of nothingness that come from the realization that one is a machine
have nothing to do with negative emotions. At the back of negative
emotions lie anger, violence, suspicion, bitterness, internal accounts,
and so on. But behind the emotion arising from the realization of
mechanicalness lies peace. And it is this emotion that can overcome
negative emotions.
Now once you begin to feel negative emotions are mechanical—to
feel for yourself by inner taste that this is so—you deprive them of a
great deal of their power. Inner taste is the first sign of Buried Conscience. Unless we had this deeper emotional perception, we could
never feel that negative emotions are undesirable. And if, in addition
to this, you can see for yourself that they always lie and do not present
things in a true way, but twist and distort everything, then you will not
suffer from their continual dominion over you as most people do. I
mean, of course, provided you do not fall fast asleep. For if you feel
they are mechanical and mentally see they tell lies, then you are using
two centres consciously and that makes something very powerful that
can resist the great power of mechanicalness. It is these quiet emotions
and insights and perceptions of truth that have the greatest healing
power and help us against the tyranny of the machine—which all this
time we have assumed is oneself. But this machine—oneself—is not
1013
really oneself. In the grip of it we lead the most stupid and even idiotic
lives. The Work is to awaken us to a new behaviour, apart from this
stereotyped machine-behaviour. Remember—one can take everything
in a new way. Yes, I assure you that you can take every life-situation,
every life-event, in an entirely new way—if you see how you have
hitherto taken it as a machine. Once this begins in you, you begin to
have a psychology. An ordinary machine-man has no psychology. G.
said once, in so many words: "Why speak of ordinary man asleep as
having a psychology?" An ordinary man asleep is a machine, with
buffers, attitudes, and pictures of himself, that remain the same. For
such a man, a man asleep, a man not conscious, to use the word
psychology is absurd. He has no psychology. He is a machine—and for
the study of machines only mechanics is necessary. But if a man begins
to struggle with his machine, if he begins to see he is asleep in this
acquired machinery, then such a man begins to cease to be this machine
that life and upbringing has made him and then, in such a case, we
might begin to speak of psychology and not mere mechanics."
Very often I used to ponder G.'s remark: "What does it mean to
have a psychology and not merely a machinery?" On one occasion, in
speaking to O. about this, he said, in so many words: "You know that
all this Work—and all real forms of esoteric teaching—are designed to
make it possible for a man to begin to feel the influences of Higher
Centres. These centres, the Higher Mental and the Higher Emotional
Centres, correspond to what is called Greater Mind. But you must
remember that logical thinking, based on the senses turned outward to
the external world, does not put us in touch with these Higher Centres,
which exist in everyone and are fully developed and send their influences
down to us. Our trouble is that we have not any receptive apparatus
to hear them with. For that reason one definition of this Work is:
"the preparation of lower centres for the reception of the influences
coming from Higher Centres. All that this Work teaches practically
—namely, self-observation, non-identifying, Self-Remembering, not
making internal accounts, not internally considering, not justifying, not
going with negative 'I's, not being depressed, making Personality
(especially False Personality) passive, separating from negative states,
breaking buffers, destroying pictures, seeing ingrained attitudes, and
not accepting them, stopping wrong imaginations, in fact, all that this
Work teaches, is to purify lower centres for the hearing of Higher
Centres. When a man wishes to keep in touch with this Work which
really means to keep in touch with any moments of insight or SelfRemembering that he has had, from Higher Centres, then he begins
to have a psychology."
I then began to understand that when G. spoke of a man who had
a psychology and not merely a machinery, he meant a man who had
begun to strive to reach a higher level of himself and that all this Work
is exactly about this—namely, to get in touch with this higher side in
him and find out by personal experience what cuts him off and what
1014
increases his contact with this higher level. Then I better understood
the Work-phrase used in connection with a question: "What is right
and what is wrong?" The answer was and is: "All that puts you more
asleep and makes you identify more is wrong: all that awakens you is
right."
Great Amwell House, Easter, April 5, 1947
NEUTRALIZING FORCE—TRIADS
On one occasion I was speaking to Mr. Ouspensky and he interrupted me by saying: "Why are you so tragic?" I was naturally very
surprised to be told that I spoke tragically. You know now perhaps
how people tend to speak about their lives and difficulties tragically,
and what this tragic sense can drag people down to. I said I did not
think I spoke tragically. He said: "Yes, you do not see it yet. But this
is a sign of a bad neutralizing force to speak from. One must learn not
to be tragic."
This was long ago, when early meetings were being held at the time
in Harley Street. I remember the place, the people, even the expressions and postures, but I got nothing from what he said except resentment. That is to say, I had not become in any way conscious of
speaking tragically. All I felt was being hurt and surprised. Certainly,
looking back, I see I did speak tragically. Tragedy, speaking tragically,
is a very fond self-luxury, that can attach itself to everybody. Everything can be taken in a tragic, dramatic, negative way—that is, one
invents oneself, say, as a tragically suffering man or woman. However
all this must later on become conscious to oneself. Then it is overcome.
For to make a thing fully conscious to oneself is to overcome it. It is
only the semi-conscious or not-conscious that has power—the not-yetquite-seen, the not-yet-really acknowledged. I often thought about
what Mr. Ouspensky said in regard to it: "Being tragic is a sign of
a bad neutralizing force." At the time I understood next to nothing
about this term "neutralizing force" and, as I said, I refused to admit
that I spoke tragically. In fact, I would then never have admitted I
had any self-pity or vanity. Such a state of sleep is possible.
To-night I am going to speak of triads and so therefore of neutralizing force. Let us begin with the general idea of triads as the Work
teaches. The Work teaches that every manifestation is the result of 3
forces, active, passive and neutralizing. For any one manifestation to
take place, three forces are necessary. No manifestation can take place
without the co-operation of 3 forces. Everything that manifests
itself is due to three forces. We see a manifestation and think it is one
thing. But it is not due to one thing but to three things—that is, 3
1015
forces, meeting at a point, which produce the manifestation. Therefore,
every manifestation is a complex thing—not one thing, but three things
in a certain balance.
Now in order to understand as simply as possible how every manifestation is the result of 3 forces and not one force, let us begin with
the idea that you want something and let us call the wanting of something active force. Now simply wanting something will not lead to your
having it. This fact makes many people early sick at heart. They say
"if only", and so on, and become negative. The world is full of imbeciles
of this kind who simply want something and, not getting it, become
sick-hearted and so tragic. Now if you want something, you have to
calculate on the existence of 2nd force, or passive force, which is the
force of resistance to what you perhaps quite simply and innocently
want and expect to be given. This 2nd force meets everything that
you want at every turn, at every point. So the Work teaches that if you
want something—if you make an aim, say—you must calculate this
2nd force which will at once oppose what you want, what you aim at.
You have, say, a phantasy, the idea that you will be a wonderful woman,
adored by every man, or a wonderful man, adored by every woman,
and so on. Yes, in phantasy this is easy. People are absorbed in similar
phantasies all day long. But to make phantasy equal to reality takes
time and effort. Why? Because in phantasies there is no 2nd force,
or very little, let us say, for here something else comes in that is very
interesting. I will say here simply that no phantasies are quite satisfactory and 2nd force appears in many ways.
Now in reality, if you want something, you will inevitably have to
meet the opposing force to what you want—that is, 2nd force or
force of resistance to what you want—and contend with it. Let us say
that you wish to make everyone converted to your own idea of life and
to make them think as you do. Take this as first or active force. You
advance into life and meet with perhaps indifference or derision or
criticism or contempt. You become disappointed or tragic or full of
self-pity. Why? Because you have not calculated the effects of 2nd
force. What is 2nd force here? Well, you can see what it is. People
are not interested, they do not believe you, they are satisfied with what
they have, so other people are 2nd force. So you fail and become
tragic, misunderstood, and so on. Yes, but why? Because you want
something and do not see how 2nd force will inevitably appear and
inevitably oppose what you want. People call it the devil. But it is the
Trinity—the 3 forces at work—active, passive and neutralizing.
Now the relationship between 1st and 2nd force is established by
the nature and quality of 3rd force. The 3rd force brings the 1st
and 2nd forces into connection and so it is called sometimes connecting force. You will now see why O. said to me that "speaking
tragically is a sign of a bad neutralizing force." A bad neutralizing
force will relate me badly to 2nd force—to all that is opposed to what
I want. Everything will then overcome me.
1016
When active force—and here we are calling it what you want—has a
bad or wrong neutralizing force with the force of the opposition—that
is, 2nd force—then 2nd force becomes active force. The whole
triad is reversed. The two forces, active and passive, reverse their roles.
Instead of using 2nd force through right or clever connecting force,
to work out practically the end or aim contained in active force, the
triad reverses, and opposing force becomes triumphant—that is, it turns
into active force. Now this can happen all the time to everyone because
for one reason people want what is impossible save in phantasy. We
are told in this Work not to make too many requirements. If you make
many requirements then you will, in so many words, be up against life
all the time—that is, up against that aspect of life which is 2nd or
opposing force. You will never learn anything, never gain by experience, because there is no effort to deal cleverly with 2nd force.
You will see now that second force is necessary for the development
of individuality—that is, how you individually and from yourself deal
with the inevitable 2nd force. If you deal cleverly with this 2nd force
it will give you results and, instead of being simply a blind, opposing
force, will become gradually what you want. You do not instantly
become negative when opposed. You try this way and that, and
gradually this formidable opposition yields and becomes what you
want—or, let us say, rather, what is possible in your wanting. Then
active force as what you want—and let us bring in here the idea of
what you will—by modifying itself attains through a right neutralizing
force its aim. G. said: "Patience is the Mother of Will." That is, Will,
passing through patience as 3rd force, attains what it wants. But to
will, to want, blindly, is not clever, and leads only into a hard, uncompromising force of opposition—that is, into a reversal of the triad, and
so to negative states. In the Gospels Christ spoke a great deal about
cleverness in dealing with life and its situations. To-night we will go no
further but later on return to this subject—namely, a clever neutralizing
force.
Great Amwell House, April 12, 1947
ACCIDENT AND FATE
From one point of view the Personality can be thought of as the
outer man and the Essence as the inner man. We know that in the
growth of a child Personality gradually surrounds active Essence and
becomes active, while Essence becomes passive. This first state of
development usually persists throughout life and is sufficient for lifepurposes. But a further development is possible and it is of this further
development that esotericism always speaks, and that this system speaks.
1017
It consists in a reversal. In fragments of past literature coming from
schools connected with fully developed—that is, conscious Man—you
will often find references to some reversal that is necessary before Man
reaches full development. Man adjusted to life, Man with Personality
active and grown, and Essence passive and ungrown, is not yet a fully
developed Man according to esoteric teaching. A great deal of confusion arises in people's minds because this idea is not grasped distinctly.
Life develops Man up to a point, but cannot bring about this reversal
in him that leads to his further and full development.
In the brief condensed language of this system the reversal is
formulated as consisting in making Personality passive and Essence
active. Now education does not bring about this reversal. Education
increases Personality and so moves Man further and further away from
his Essence. Simple folk can live closer to Essence. It might be said
that to-day the world is suffering from a wrong, one-sided development
of Personality. If by magic or dire stress everyone became simpler, it
might seem like reversal. But the reversal spoken of in esoteric literature, say in the Gospels, where it is called re-birth, is only brought about
internally in a man's own experience with himself and not through a
change of circumstances outside him.
You must remember that your usual life and its ambitions and
interests can be taken away from you and if you have nothing else you
feel indeed lost. For example, in illness force may be drained from the
Personality and the quality of Essence appear. Personality is the
machine through which you adapt to life and feel its influences and
attractions. We may suddenly by illness be faced with another kind of
life. Yes, but what kind? O. said some illnesses were to open something
in us that health and success could not. If we already have a slight
internal life apart from our outer life we have something to fall back on.
I said that from one point of view Personality can be thought of as the
outer man and Essence as the inner man. If a man is only developed in
the outer side and has no inner development he is called in the Work
a machine driven by outer life and its turning wheel of changing circumstances. Yet the Work also teaches that Man was created a selfdeveloping organism and that full development consists in a development of Essence, or the internal man, further upon the first development of the Personality or outer man, which gives a relation to external
life and its affairs. All esoteric teaching, such as that found in fragments
in the Gospels, is clearly about the development of the internal man.
Very little is said about the development of the external man, the
business man, the professional man, etc. It is the second development
that is emphasized. But, as was said, people mix up the two. Christ
did not say he came to make everything nice and satisfactory on this
Earth. He said: "Think not that I came to send peace on the Earth:
I came not to send peace, but a sword." (Matt. X 34.) The conditions of the second development—the reversal or re-birth—are the
important things. A smug, settled earth without acute internal struggle
1018
and searchings and contradictions on all sides could hardly be expected
to produce the conditions for the second development which is internal,
individual, and a matter of one's own most real and deepest thoughts
and essential feelings.
Yet few people think much about what their existence means save
in terms of their external man and his needs. Now to think about one's
life from the internal man is a quite different thing from thinking about
it from the external man. You all know, whether perhaps of yourself
or others, how it is possible to have a somewhat pious and religious,
even holy, external side and perform various acts to give a good
impression, and yet in the internal side there is nothing whatever that
corresponds. In such a person—that is, in short, in all of us—there is
an almost total severance between the outer and inner man: and the
outer dominates the inner. It is the inner man developed who should
dominate the outer man. If a man acts sincerely from himself the case
is different.
Now as long as a man's outer side or Personality is active and takes
the lead, especially from the idea that it can do, the man is under the
Law of Accident. That is, anything, however meaningless, can happen
to him. When the inner man or essential man becomes active he is
under the Law of Fate and then what happens is significant for him.
Personality is under the Law of Accident: Essence is under the Law of
Fate. This is expressed in the Work by saying that Essence is (to begin
with) under the Laws of the Planetary World—that is, 24 laws—and
that Personality is under the Law of the Earth—that is, 48 laws—and it
is added that False Personality is under the Laws of the Moon—that is,
96 laws. There is, therefore, a point in us called Essence, that is under
fewer laws than all that belongs to Personality or False Personality. It
is to become more conscious in this point that we work on ourselves and
our inner life. When a man remembers himself, he is under 24 laws.
When he is asleep in negative emotions, etc., he is under 48 or 96 laws.
Great Amwell House, April 19, 1947
ON PSYCHOLOGICAL THINKING
When people no longer believe in Greater Mind and the existence
of any form of knowledge and truth higher than materialism and what
is evident to the senses, they are mentally shut. One characteristic of
a shut mind is the absence of Magnetic Centre. In that case, no
influences, apart from those of the life of the world, can be received,
because then the first necessary receptive apparatus is missing. The
mentally defective person, in this sense, cannot either let a ray of light
into his inner darkness or ever change the relationship between.
1019
Personality and Essence. Life must remain his Neutralizing Force.
That is, no reversal within him can take place. He remains, to use a
phrase of the Work, an unfinished house.
Now the Work says that we must create our lives. It also says
repeatedly that its teaching is to make us think for ourselves. Can we
suppose then that we can create our own lives if we have never thought
for ourselves? Everyone on reflection can see that the human mind, by
its mechanical way of working, contributes to its own early enslavement.
That is, it very easily forms acquired habits of thought, associations,
attitudes, borrowed beliefs, opinions, and so on. So it fixes itself at an
early age unless impressions are taken in voluntarily.
A person fixed in this way does not think for himself and cannot
therefore create his own life. If we follow general views and standards
and conventional family or racial opinions, etc., we do not create our
own lives. Life creates our lives. If everyone had reached his inner
goal and had become conscious in Real 'I' instead of in the many
acquired 'I's of Personality then he would have created his life. He
would be a house completed—or, as the Work puts it quite simply, he
would be a Man and not a machine. To-day we can watch on all sides
machines trying to do, not men trying to do. But it is better to observe
the continual struggle in oneself between more mechanical and more
conscious 'I's. More conscious 'I's—that is, 'I's that wish to grow, to
remember, to understand for themselves and form Deputy-Steward, are
kept down, often sternly, by mechanical or dead 'I's with old voices,
corpses in one's Time-Body.
It is a mistake to sacrifice psychological thinking. It is an everrepeating tragedy in the world of sleeping humanity that psychological
understanding is put to death by logical and literal thinking. This is
one meaning of the crucifixion. You can see all through the Gospels
that Christ was teaching psychological thinking, something new. That was
why he used parables and not commandments of stone. John the
Baptist could not understand him because he was of the old literal,
dogmatic, harsh, merciless school, and so clad in camel's hair and
leather—for what you are clad in means, in psychological language,
what truth you wear, what your mind wears. Now no one can create
his own life unless he can reach the level of psychological thinking.
Four mind-levels are given in the Work:
Greater Mind
Psychological Thinking
Logical Thinking
A-logical
Thinking
(e.g.
superstition)
In many ancient symbolic drawings of Man, he is first represented
as lying asleep on the ground, horizontal. At the last, through the
operation of a Third Force different from life, he is represented as
standing up with his eyes open. But to stand on one's feet and to
awaken—that is long work, and, if a man cannot even begin to think
psychologically, it will be impossible. He will insist on everything being
1020
put down for him in black and white so that the logical formatory mind
can get hold of it. He will not jump to catch the rope overhead but will
make requirements. But no one has ever reached a higher level of Being
by means of that interpretation of one's meaning on Earth given by the
formatory centre. One might almost say the reverse—namely, that
formatory thinking, so much taught and emphasized to-day, can pull
down the level of Being. What does psychological thinking mean? In
the first place it has three forces in it, while formatory logical thinking
has two. In the second place, it is not seated in the moving parts of
centres, but in the higher divisions, turned towards Higher Centres
themselves.
To free ourselves from the laws we are under on this planet inevitably, a man, a woman, must think differently. Yes, think differently from
all ordinary life-thinking. It is so easy just to think as everyone thinks.
Mob-thinking is easy, whatever your social mob is. But to think for
yourself, to begin to create your life, is only possible through utterly
new ideas. This is the function of esoteric knowledge—to make a man
think in a new way. Mere reaction to life-thinking is useless. To become
a Radical in opposition to a Tory, etc., etc., is not thinking in a new
way. Merely to go against everything your parents taught you is not
thinking in a new way. It is life-thinking—pendulum-thinking—in
terms of the opposites that the pendulum is always ticking between.
That is not new thinking, nor can it produce in us ideas and thoughts
that can create our lives—that is, lead to the Master—that is, Real 'I'—
entering the carriage and telling the Driver where to go.
Now the idea of the Conscious Circle of Humanity, the idea of
Greater Mind, or, to put it in terms of the Gospels, the Kingdom of
Heaven, that is a new idea belonging to creating one's life. Connected
with this, and oppositely, the idea that Man is asleep on this planet
and can do nothing unless he awakens—that he is definitely hypnotized
—is a new idea. Again, the idea that one has no Real 'I' is a new idea.
The idea that Man—that is, you—is not properly conscious, the idea
of being identified and so asleep, and all the teaching connected with
it, the idea that Man—that is, you—is governed by negative emotion—
all this is knowledge that really makes a person with Magnetic Centre
begin to think in a new way—that is, it leads to μετάνοια—change of
mind. This makes the possibility of creating one's life, and only such
ideas, coming from a higher level of Being, can alter us and create a
new person. That is, only contact with the 3rd Force of the Work—
the influences coming from Conscious Man, from Greater Mind, and
thinking from the ideas given by them, can enable a person to create
his life.
Now the ideas, the knowledge, coming from Greater Mind, cannot
be understood logically. On that level they are split into opposites,
into contradictions. Logically a thing is either right or wrong: psychologically it can be either right or wrong relatively. Relative thinking, in
the Work-sense, means thinking of the Part in relation to the Whole.
1021
To think relatively, it is said, one must know something of All before one
can think of a detail, a part. The Ray of Creation, for example, gives us
our Earth in relation to All—to the whole Ray—and this at once alters
our thought of the Earth.
Now to think of yourself from yourself is one thing, but to think of
yourself from what the Work teaches is another thing. To think of
yourself from what the Work teaches is to begin to think psychologically.
Great Amwell House, April 29, 1947
FURTHER NOTE ON PSYCHOLOGICAL THINKING
Let us try to understand again what the Work means by psychological thinking and find examples. In his introduction to his last book
O. says that logically machine-guns are excellent, but psychologically
they are wrong. Nowadays we might easily apply this idea to atombombs. Logically, they are excellent for totally annihilating the enemy,
but psychologically they are all wrong. Now what does this mean?
Can you see what is meant? Let us reflect. To-day war is openly
avowed to be total. Everything that remains human and decent in war,
we are told, must be eliminated. Total war is total destruction, without
mercy or pity. Logically, this is an excellent argument. If, they say,
you are going to have war, let it be total war. Let us invent machines
by our logical science that will, at one instant, destroy a continent.
And some add that this is the only way to end war.
Now one object of the Work is to teach us psychological thinking,
and one out of many aspects of the teaching in this respect is about
external considering. Let us think about what external considering means.
It means, in a word, putting yourself in the position of another person.
In the Gospels it is called "love of neighbour"—a phrase perhaps which
does not to-day conduct much meaning, but which if properly translated, would mean "be conscious of your neighbour"—for what is
translated as "love" is very close to the supreme idea of this Work—
namely, to become more conscious, to enlarge our consciousness—in
fact, to become Conscious Man. The Conscious Circle of Humanity—as
the Work terms it—is composed of people who, in comparison with us,
are fully conscious. To be fully conscious implies, amongst many things,
to be conscious of oneself and of the other person. External considering
means to be conscious in the other person—to put your consciousness,
so to speak, into the other person—so that you see from him what he feels
about you. That is, you can see, let us say, why he dislikes you. But that
is impossible unless you have become conscious of yourself. By that
means one sees oneself in others and others in oneself. This ends
violence. And so it ends mass-killing by machines. O. once said that
1022
machines make war. He said it is as if they insist on being used and
Man, being asleep, and having no real will, has to obey their will to be
used. The idea is worth thinking about—that is, if you have any time
to think for yourself in the increasingly hurried stress of life. The idea,
of course, belongs to the great idea of the Work that Man himself is
a machine and can do nothing, unless he reaches a higher level of
consciousness and comes under better influences and so is helped. Now
to put yourself completely in another person's situation, with conscious
knowledge of yourself as a starting-point, is one example of thinking
psychologically. You will lay aside the machine-guns. Violence only
breeds violence. Consciousness takes away the desire for violence, for
how can you be violent with, as it were, yourself—that is, when you
recognize that the other person is yourself and has the same fears and
pain? This is by way of commentary and I put as an example of
psychological thinking, based on this remark of O., that the use of machineguns is no doubt right on the logical level but does not belong to the
level of psychological thinking and is not right on that level—that is,
a man who thinks on the psychological level cannot use them, just like
that, or any other mass-destructive machinery.
Now no psychological thinking is possible if there is no belief in
Greater Mind. Let us put the different categories of thinking on the
board again, one below another. First comes Greater Mind. This mind
is beyond our mind. It thinks not only differently but in an entirely
different way. Now we can guess one way it thinks—namely, it thinks
always relatively. That is, when we, with our scarcely conscious minds,
think of one thing, of a thing, separate from anything else, Greater Mind
thinks of that one thing in relation to the whole thing of which it is a
part. Now our thinking, to take one example, can scarcely get beyond
our national country. The existence of the world as a whole, of which
our country is a small part, and of our country as a small part of the
whole world, does not enter consciousness as a sine qua non of even
beginning to think rightly in this respect. "In relative thinking", O.
said, "it is necessary to know something of the whole before one can
think rightly of the part. This is the right definition of relative thinking
and it is what I mean when I speak of relative thinking to you." He
added that only a little may be known of the whole, and far more of the
part, but that, unless the two were thought of in relation to one another,
the thinking would be wrong. He observed that we live in a related
Universe—a Universe in which everything is related with everything
else and everything influences everything else, and nothing can be taken
separately, isolated from the rest. It is just the same, he said, with the
body. Not a single part of the body is isolated, a thing by itself. To
understand a small part of the body, such as the thumb, something
must be known of the whole body, and the part thought of in relation
to the whole. First the thumb has to be thought of in relation to the
hand, and to the four fingers which are useless without the thumb,
and so to the arm, etc. We can therefore be sure that Greater Mind.
1023
although its mode of thinking is quite different from ours and it
is another kind of mind altogether, always thinks relatively and that,
to it, everything is seen to be related to everything else. Again, we
may be sure that Greater Mind, thinking relatively, can be conscious
in all 3 forces, and certainly in 2nd force, and calculate when and how
it will appear if such-and-such a thing is done. Many things, therefore, that mechanical man reacts to without consciousness, must appear
sheer insanity to Greater Mind. In short, our wisdom must appear
sheer folly. So it is said in sacred writings: "For the wisdom of this
world is foolishness with God"—God meaning Greater Mind.
Now we shall speak for a moment of Higher Centres, and Greater
Mind, and fully Conscious Man together. You have heard that the
language of Higher Centres is not logical language, because it has three
forces in it and cannot be understood at the logical level. The ideas of
Higher Centres do not fall on lower centres but are altered. This is one
reason why C influences—coming direct from Higher Centres or Conscious Man—are inevitably distorted in passing into life and so become
B influences. Think about this for yourselves and see why this must be
so. Higher Centres do not think in terms of Yes-or-No: they do not
think from opposites as does the formatory or logical mind. Their range
of thinking is of another order in which there are no contradictions. To
make contact with Greater Mind, a man must understand that his
logical formatory thinking will prevent him. A logical man cannot
understand this Work. He must "jump" from that formatory arguing
level and catch "the rope suspended above his head." He must first
begin to distinguish between psychological meaning and logical meaning. For example, when it says in the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day
our daily bread," the logical thinking takes this as literal bread. But
it does not mean literal bread. Notice that the prayer begins with the
idea of Greater Mind—namely, "Our Father in Heaven". The bread
prayed for is meaning from Greater Mind. In the Greek the word
translated as "daily" is a word not used anywhere else which has
nothing to do with the baker delivering bread every day. Now if a
person begins to see the world and himself in the light of esoteric
teaching—that is, in the light of this Work—he begins to awaken.
Then he prays for that which will help him to awaken and keep him
awake daily. Now you understand that in the above example logical,
literal thinking will take "Bread" as bread. If there be a God it is
surely perfectly logical to ask him for daily, physical bread. The point
is that the prayer does not mean this. It means something on a different
level that can only be understood by psychological thinking and you
will see that it is all connected with the general idea of the Ray of
Creation, of Greater Mind, of the Conscious Circle of Humanity, of
Man awakening and getting in touch with higher forces that will help
him to undergo his destined internal development. In other words,
praying for his so-called daily bread means praying for the force, the
influences, that will enable the spirit of Man to awaken and open his
1024
eyes and stand upright on his feet on this Earth where everyone is
asleep and spiritually horizontal and yet imagines he can do. That
implies that he imagines he knows what right and wrong is and can
ensure it. I will end this brief commentary by saying that another
example of psychological thinking is concealed in this statement:
"Whatever keeps you awake is right: whatever puts you to sleep is
wrong." This gives a new idea of right and wrong—a psychological
idea, not a literal one.
Great Amwell House, May 3, 1947
A NOTE ON EXTERNAL CONSIDERING
A quite natural question was asked at one of the sub-groups in
connection with the last paper: "Can external considering be entirely
divorced from internal considering?"
External considering is always conscious. It is anti-mechanical and
so requires conscious effort. Internal considering is always mechanical
and so effortless—that is, not conscious, but the work of the machine.
To put yourself consciously in the position of another person and see
yourself in him and him in yourself is a conscious act requiring conscious
effort. Internal considering goes by itself and is mechanical. Just
cheering up a person who is miserable is ordinary human and reasonable behaviour, but if it is a question of the Work—and here the Second
Line of Work comes in—you have to listen to the person internally and
find the corresponding thing in yourself—that is, to reflect the person in
yourself as by a mirror, finding the same thing in yourself and not
denying it, and then the other person will undergo a change of state
without your saying anything. You do not blame but accept and by
doing this you make room for the other person to alter. We have, in the
Second Line, to make room for others. This is quite different from
helping the person in the ordinary sense, which is simply the blind
leading the blind. External considering demands listening internally
and finding the same thing in yourself—that is, if you have sufficient
self-observation and self-knowledge. You cannot influence others if you
do not know the other person in yourself.
External considering is seeing the state of a person and remembering
that you were in that state, because in the Work everyone passes through
the same states as, say, an older, intelligent person has passed through
and remembers. Intelligence means seeing the truth of a thing. As I
implied, the mere finding in yourself of this state of the other person,
without saying anything, will help the other person. External considering is a deep internal act and is based on an increase of conscious1025
ness—that is, on love—for all real love is consciousness of another
person's difficulties through finding the same difficulties in yourself.
Conscious love is not blind. This makes a new neutralizing force—a
Work-force. So in a sense it is done in silence—internally. It can be
done, even if you are not in the presence of the other person, by inner
work and by always finding the same state in yourself for which you
might tend to blame the other person and perhaps nobly try not to,
and call it self-sacrifice. This is useless suffering. But when you are
externally considering, which is inner, you must not shew it outwardly
—otherwise it becomes condescension and so goes into False Personality.
To imagine you, as you are, can help another is always condescension.
That is, it is based on the idea that you know better. You can, by
sitting in your room and doing this inner work of external considering,
this consciousness of your Work-neighbour, actually change the state of
that person at a distance, but only by becoming conscious of the same
state in yourself and so seeing him or her in yourself. So you climb
down, as it were, and do not feel superior.
People will say: "Why is external considering called external and
internal considering called internal, if the act of external considering is
internal? " Reflect for a moment, and you will plainly see why. In
external considering you put yourself in the position of an external
person, an outer object—namely, the other person. In internal considering you think only of yourself. The first is objective, the second is
subjective. We do not see people objectively: we see them subjectively
—that is, as we imagine or expect them to be. We all do violence to
one another by not realizing this. In this sense, people can be mutually
destructive of one another.
Now the 4th State of Consciousness is called Objective Conscious
ness. The four States of Consciousness as given by this Work are:
4 State of Objective Consciousness
3 State of Self-Remembering
2 State of So-called Waking Consciousness
1 State of literal Sleep—physical Sleep
These are the 4 States or Levels of Consciousness as given by the
Work and we first strive to reach level No. 3. To reach State No. 4 a
man must pass through State No. 3—otherwise he will get nothing,
recall nothing of a sudden touching of State No. 4. What can we
understand by State No. 4—that is, the State of Objective Consciousness? The first answer is that in this state we see things as they really
are. But this definition does not satisfy the mind. Naturally it cannot,
because no one can describe a higher state of consciousness to another
person who has never touched it. Unless we have touched the state of
Objective Consciousness we cannot apprehend it, just as a man sensible
of a three-dimensional world cannot apprehend how things would be
in a four, five or six-dimensional world. For instance, he cannot apprehend the idea of his Time-Body—that is, that all his past life is living.
But he can begin to understand, however vaguely, what Objective
1026
Consciousness might mean. Take what was said: "It is seeing what
things really are." The best analogy is a mirror. A good mirror faithfully reflects the outer scene. It distorts nothing. It is not jealous. In
a word, it has no subjectivity. It shews you just what you look like.
People say that a mirror does not lie. Now if we could squeeze out our
sentimentality, our imaginations based on False Personality, our
negative, subjective states, our so-called ideals and a thousand and one
other things, including our lovely pictures of ourselves, ingrained hostile
attitudes, typical mechanical reactions, buffers, prejudices, vanities, and,
in short, all the Work teaches us to work against and separate from,
then we are approaching the state of seeing things as they are. Now to
see another as he or she is demands one absolutely necessary preliminary
—namely, the necessity of seeing what oneself is like. The more conscious you are of yourself, of what you are like, the more will you see
others objectively. For self-knowledge, gained through the practice of
self-observation over a long time—in fact, all one's life, after one meets
the Work—leads to you yourself becoming more and more objective to
yourself. The import of self-observation is to make you an increasing
object to yourself—that is, to make this thing to which you have been a
slave, this thing you have accepted as a whole without question—
namely, "yourself"—more and more objective. If I see something in
myself it is no longer me—that is, subjective—but becomes an object
to me—a thing separate that I can see as distinct from what I regarded
as myself. The part of you that begins to see yourself as an object
retreats inwardly until finally it leads to Real 'I' which lies inward and
is your real self and is unobservable—that is, it is an experience that
cannot be further made objective or analyzed. It becomes close to but
not actually "I am that I am". Then a man is master of himself and
is no longer in multiplicity but in unity. This state is very far. But it
is quite real, quite true.
This idea is expressed in the Work-diagram that begins with
Observing ' V and leads up to Master. Let us look once more at the
diagram:
Master. Real 'I'
Steward
Deputy-Steward
Observing 'I'
One clear thing that this diagram indicates is that unless a man or
woman establishes Observing 'I' in themselves nothing can take place
in regard to their full development—which is the passage from the state
of many contradictory 'I's that belong to the so-called Waking State
of Consciousness, upwards towards the attainment of Real 'I', which is,
as it were, awaiting oneself. But taking what is not oneself as oneself
can only lead to endless sleep and negative states. So a man who attains
to his real goal—namely, becoming conscious in Real 'I'—is objectively
conscious—that is, he attains the 4th State of Consciousness.
Let me quote now in brief what O. said about the preliminary state
1027
which leads to Objective Consciousness. In his experiments on himself,
quoted in "Experimental Mysticism", he says he reached a state in
which the ordinary sense of 'I' vanished. He says: "I understood that
with the usual sensation of 'I' all usual troubles, cares and anxieties are
connected. Therefore, when 'I' disappears, all troubles and cares and
anxieties disappear ... I saw how terrible it is to take on ourselves
this idea of 'I' and bring in this idea of 'I' into everything we do—as if
we all called ourselves God. I felt then that only God could call
himself 'I' ".
Now the more you make yourself objective to yourself the more
you lose the ordinary, usual, worrying feeling of 'I'. This is a sign that
one is moving towards a different level of consciousness, the highest of
which is Objective Consciousness.
Great Amwell House, May 10, 1947
THE BODY AND THE DIFFERENT MINDS
THAT ACT ON IT
I
On one occasion G. said that amongst the many illusions which
influence us deeply and keep us in that remarkable daily state of
consciousness, which we take for granted as full consciousness and which
the Work calls sleep or so-called waking consciousness, is the illusion
that we have one mind. We call the functions of this mind conscious.
Imagining thus that we have one mind and that the functions of this
mind are conscious, we completely misunderstand ourselves and therefore completely misunderstand everyone else. When this teaching was
first given it was said: "I want to explain to you that the activity of the
human machine—that is, of the physical body—is controlled not by
one but by several minds, entirely independent of each other, having
separate functions and spheres in which they manifest themselves. This
must be understood first of all, because unless this is understood nothing
else can be understood." Now when I first heard these words I realized
that hitherto I had always thought that we possessed only one mind.
It had not occurred to me, for example, that what we call feelings are
also the manifestation of a mind different from that which thinks, and
that feelings have a cognitive value—that is to say, feelings have knowledge value. Or, put in another way, you may know something through
a feeling which you cannot know through a thought—that is, through
the thinking mind
To know with what we ordinarily call the mind and to know with
the feelings are two totally different kinds of knowing. Now a man who
1028
trusts only that mind called the thinking or intellectual mind can form
many intellectual theories as to what is absolutely right or wrong. But
the conclusions of the intellectual mind may be completely contradicted
by that mind whose functions belong to feeling. Intellectually, I may
prove to myself that such and such a thing or viewpoint is right. But
when I am conscious of any feeling about the matter I may be not quite
so sure and I must modify the working of one mind by the working of
another mind, called feeling. You can see the strength of the illusion
that we have only one mind on every side to-day.
Now let us take the diagram of the different minds in Man that can
at different times control the human machine—that is, the body, which
is the visible apparatus for the invisible minds and so the visible representation of the different minds by means of sense-perceived speech,
intonation, movement, expression, posture and action, etc. Man, in
the Work, is taken as a 3-storey house:
Intellectual Centre
Higher Mental Centre
Emotional Centre
Higher Emotional Centre
Sex Centre
Instinctive Centre
Moving Centre
You will see that in each storey of Man's 3-storey house he has
different centres. Now each centre is a different mind. Each centre, a
different mind, views the same problem quite differently. Each centre
is a mind that sees the same thing in a different way. On one occasion,
in speaking of this, Mr. Ouspensky said, in so many words: "Man is
like a house with windows opening on to different sides. You look
through a window facing south, and then through a window facing
north, and then east, and then west. You believe at first that only the
view of things that you get from looking south can be true—the truth
as we call it. But looking through a window giving on the north you
see a quite different aspect and then think that must be the truth, and
so on. Actually, a balanced man, who can use all ordinary centres, can
see as it were out of all windows. He realizes the truth as that which is
transmitted severally from each window and then joined into a whole
view by 'remembering'". He added later that it also might be compared
with walking round a house. One sees first one side, then the other and so
on—and so gains a whole idea of the house, not a one-sided view of it.
1029
As you know, the Work teaches that there are three kinds of
Mechanical Man—that is, Man asleep and serving nature. The first
has his centre of gravity in Instinctive and Moving Centre and he is
called No. 1 Man. The second has his centre of gravity in Emotional
Centre and he is called No. 2 Man. The third has his centre of gravity
in the Intellectual Centre and he is called No. 3 Man. Man in the
Work is divided into different categories. No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 men are
all one-sided—and so see everything subjectively and always quarrel with
one another. To-day you see the tragedy of mechanical, one-sided men
trying to understand each other and come to agreement. One is looking
at the view, say, from the south window, the next from the north
window, and so on. How can they agree? Each uses one mind only
and so sees everything differently from the others. Now the development of Man—the inner possible development that all esoteric teaching
is about—can begin with the further development of only one centre.
No. 1 Man—Instinct-Moving Man—can undergo a severe discipline
in order to get Will over the Instinctive and Moving Centres. This,
the Work calls "The Way of Fakir". No. 2 Man—Emotional Man—
can be subjected to severe discipline in order to get Will over his
emotions. This is called "Way of Monk". No. 3 Man can undergo
severe training to control Intellectual Centre. This is called in the
Work "Yogi-Way".
These are the 3 Ways. But there is a 4th Way. This Work—
this teaching—is about the 4th Way. What is one characteristic—out
of many—of the 4th Way? In the 4th Way, which is rarely met with
and enters the world only before some crisis is impending, work is
done on all centres at the same time. That is, a man in the 4th Way
seeks to reach the level of Balanced Man or No. 4 Man. He seeks to
use and learn how to control not one centre but three centres—namely,
Intellectual Centre, Emotional Centre and Instinct-Moving Centre.
For the moment let us leave the question of the control of Sex Centre,
save that it can be said that without becoming conscious in the three
other centres, realizing what they need and what they demand in the
way of force, it remains impossible to understand how to relate the
manifestations of Sex Centre rightly. I speak from the angle of balancing of forces. One centre can take too much force.
We have, then, briefly put, a system of teaching called the Work
that begins with the study and observation of the 3 centres,
Intellectual, Emotional and Instinct-Moving. Now the Work as taught
so far begins with the observation of the thoughts and the emotions or
feelings as quite distinct. One of the first things taught is that a man,
a woman, must observe that different centres exist in them and that
they are not one person. They must begin by self-observation to become
conscious of their thoughts and of their feelings and know distinctly
whether they are thinking or feeling. To merely feel everything, when
it is necessary to think, is wrong. Merely to think when one should also
feel is wrong. Merely to think and feel without corresponding action
1030
from Moving Centre is wrong. Merely to act without thought or feeling
is wrong. We seek in this Work to live more consciously and to live
more consciously requires internal self-observation which leads to selfknowledge. One must first be more conscious of oneself—of what one is
like. Do you always feel instead of thinking, or vice versa? To realize
by internal observation and self-awareness that one is not one mind, but,
to begin with, three minds, changes our self-sufficient, taken-for-granted
view of ourselves—that is, begins to awaken us. The balancing of all
the different viewpoints, of the different minds, begins the Work of
transformation of Being. It begins with not identifying with one point of view,
with one mind, with one centre. This is difficult work—over a long period.
But it leads in the real, inborn direction of Man—namely, inner
development.
As you know, the Work teaches that Man is an experiment on this
planet. He was created a self-developing organism, as distinguished from
the animals and plants which are given their lives via the mind of
Instinctive Centre. Man as a 3-storey being has a certain inner
task, which has been spoken of in different forms, religious or otherwise, from the beginning of history. This inner task is inner development. This Work, which cannot be given in a nut-shell, is about what
to do, what efforts are necessary, what is allowed in respect of this inner
possibility destined-by-Creation, where a man, following by practice
the teaching of this Work from sincere inner evaluation—that is, love
of it—eventually can reach the state where the two Higher Centres or
minds begin to influence him directly and then he passes under a control
that fulfils his inborn meaning, and no longer serves nature blindly, as
does sleeping humanity. He is then awake.
Now in this brief commentary let me add that to awaken from
sleep: (1) a man, a woman, must realize that they are asleep and that
they do not remember themselves, and (2) they must see that the state
of their Emotional Centre is very bad—that is, that they know little else
emotionally than negative emotions—that is, unhappy, jealous, bitter or
simply unpleasant feelings. About the practice of Self-Remembering much
has been said and will be said. The purification of the ordinary state
of the Emotional Centre—that is, the separation from negative states of
feeling and many associable unpleasant things—this again is a subject
in the teaching of this Work, which, however often talked about, must
become so real a fact, so genuine a task for everyone connected with
me, that it can eventually be remembered and understood without
constant reminders. No inner development, no inner attainment to
Real 'I', is possible unless a man, a woman, practises Self-Remembering
and non-identifying with negative states. If people do neither, they
become in time useless to this Work. Remember that in this Work
"Time is measured."
1031
Great Amwell House, May 17, 1947
THE BODY AND THE DIFFERENT MINDS
THAT ACT ON IT
II
Last time when we were speaking of the different minds that can
control the physical body of Man, the following passage was read:
"I want to explain to you that the activity of the human machine—
that is, of the physical body—is controlled not by one mind but by
several minds, entirely independent of each other and having special
functions and spheres in which they manifest themselves. This must
be understood first, because, unless this is understood, nothing else can
be understood." Now, as I said, when I heard this the first time I
realized that I had always thought we had only one mind and probably
you think the same. That is, you conceive of yourself having one mind
controlling the body and have never thought that you have more.
Actually, you have seven minds. These minds act through the seven
centres in Man and can control the working of the physical body. First
we have five, so to speak, ordinary minds, acting through the five
ordinary centres:
Intellectual Mind acting via Intellectual Centre,
Emotional Mind acting via Emotional Centre,
Sex Mind acting via Sex Centre,
Moving Mind acting via Moving Centre,
Instinctive Mind acting via Instinctive Centre.
And second, we have two super-minds with which we are not in
touch, save under exceptional circumstances when Personality is passive. These minds are:
Higher Emotional Mind acting via Higher Emotional Centre,
Higher Mental Mind acting via Higher Mental Centre.
These latter two centres each speak in a special language that is
not understood by lower centres. This is the reason why we find, say,
in Holy Scripture, many strange compositions that can only be understood psychologically and have no meaning if taken literally. In the
Bible the Creation of Man at the beginning and the Judgment of Man
at the end are in the language of Higher Emotional Centre.
Now, as was said, we have to understand that different minds
control us and that unless we can understand this we can understand
nothing about ourselves. This teaching or, as it is called, this Work,
is self-study by means of following a definite system of self-observation
—that is, we are told what to observe in ourselves and what to separate
from. To begin with, we have to observe centres in ourselves and notice
how they work in quite different spheres and see things quite differently.
Intellectual Mind sees things quite differently from Emotional Mind;
Sex Mind sees things quite differently from both Emotional Mind and
1032
Intellectual Mind, and so on. But let it be said now that actually the
three centres in the lowest compartment of the human machine need
not be opposites and can combine and so form a triad. That is, Active
Force, Passive Force and Neutralizing Force can be conducted by each
alternately in conjunction with Sex Centre, Moving Centre and
Instinctive Centre. But it must be emphasized that this does not apply
to the other centres and that the teaching as given to us so far only
speaks of Sex Centre, Moving Centre and Instinctive Centre as capable
of forming a triad and not being opposites—that is, of being able to
relate themselves together in such a way that each one conducts one
or other of the three forces.
Now let us by way of comment notice a few points about centres
that can be viewed by trained self-observation. Each centre has its own
sphere of activity—e.g. the work that Moving Centre can do is quite
different from that of Intellectual Centre. It is possible to observe that
when you are in one centre you are not necessarily in another also.
A decision made in one centre does not have any power in the sphere
of power of another centre. Now it is true that we spend most of the
day in a vague, unfocused state, in which a stream of mechanical inner
talking and phantasy goes on endlessly. This is called being between
centres. When we are in attention we are in a centre. But one centre
does not know another. They are different minds. Their modes of
doing things are quite different. A harmonized man—a man No. 4—
knows the difference of different centres and stands as it were in the
midst of them and can speak to them all. But, as we are, we do not
possess this inner state of Being, which belongs to our further development, and is definitely a higher level than we are at. The developed
man, the man needed to-day, the level we strive for, is not the usual
one-centre man, whether No. 1 or Instinctive Man, or No. 2 or
Emotional Man, or No. 3 or Intellectual Man, but Man No. 4, and
that is the general aim of everyone in this Work. For in Man No. 4 all
centres are accessible to him, according to his circumstances.
Now each centre has its own truth. So there is not one truth, but the
truth of each mind, and the whole makes up truth. I said that a
harmonized man, a balanced man, knows and understands the language and needs of the centres. So he knows which centre to use at the
right time and gives, as it were, what properly belongs to a centre. That
is, the letters, the impressions, go to the right address. But G. compared
Man as he is—that is, Man asleep in himself, ordinary Man, one-sided
Man, one-centre Man, Man not yet awakening, Man driven by outside
forces, Man-Machine—such a man G. compared with a big business
office in which sit three big bosses in different rooms. They do not
know one another and all business communications come through an
uneducated secretary who lives in a little office with two or three
standard reference-books. She does not even know what the business
house is for. She sends the incoming letters—impressions—up to the
house just as takes her fancy and the bosses cannot make head or tail
1033
of most of them. That is, what should have gone to one centre goes
to the wrong centre and so on. This is one of the pictures that has been
given, in the original teaching of the Work, of the state of ordinary
mechanical Man—that is, Man or Woman asleep.
*
*
*
Now, the paper having been read, let me speak of what it is all
about. It is necessary to bring things down to a certain level for us to
take things in. In the first place, do you begin to see you have different
centres and also that they tend to work as opposites? Each centre has its
own hunger. Have you seen from yourself that you have different
hungers? That should make you reflect that you are not one person,
but many persons. There is the hunger of Instinctive Centre, the hunger
of Sex Centre—and, more difficult perhaps to notice—the hunger of
Moving Centre—that is, the desire to make something, or take exercise.
There is also the hunger of Emotional Centre—say, to be appreciated.
And the hunger of Intellectual Centre—the hunger to know. All these
hungers are different. In Balanced Man each does not dominate and
exclude the others, for Balanced Man stands in the midst of the hungers
of different centres and does not go only with one. This is the harmonized or balanced Man. Do you think you have already reached
this stage—this level of Being? I can assure you that if you think so
it is nothing but a very complacent picture of yourself that will only
be destroyed by sincere self-observation. A man or woman who feels
that as they are they are all right and even better than others—such
people are asleep in themselves and to themselves. In short, they are
asleep. Now this Work is about awakening, not about continuing in
the general sleep of Humanity.
Great Amwell House, Whitsun, May 25, 1947
A NOTE ON UNDERSTANDING
We have noticed that in this Work Man is taken from many
different aspects and studied in different ways. From one aspect it is
said that Man has two sides—the side of his knowledge and the side of
his Being. In this connection one of the practical things we are taught
is to get knowledge of our Being. Now self-observation is to get to
know oneself—to make one objective to oneself, to become conscious of
oneself. One can get to know one's knowledge and one can get to
know one's Being. I will not speak to-day of getting to know one's
knowledge save to say that later on one finds that the degree of knowledge we have hitherto imputed to ourselves falls very far short of our
1034
imagination and that the gaps in our supposed knowledge are very
wide.
Now to gain knowledge of one's Being is one of the earliest things
emphasized in the Work. On one occasion it was said that we must
work on:
Knowledge of our Being
Self-Remembering,
Non-Considering,
Non-Identifying.
Without knowledge of our Being, it is impossible to work on Being.
Part of our Being is under the 12 influences coming from the cosmic
level of Being represented outwardly by the visible Sun; part is under
the 24 planetary laws; part is under the 48 laws of the Earth; and part
under the 96 laws of the Moon. The worst spot in our Being under the
most laws is the negative part of Emotional Centre. In this respect
one sign of a higher level of Being is the capacity to bear the unpleasant
manifestations of others. One does not continually get negative with
other people. Another sign of a higher level of Being is possession of
Magnetic Centre which means the intuition that this life is not explicable in terms of itself—or, what is the same—the power of seeing that
two sorts of influences exist, A and B.
As a man gets to see himself more objectively—that is, to have direct
knowledge of his Being—he is liable to be attacked at intervals by
special kinds of subtle negative emotions. He or she cannot be helped
save through individual struggles. These situations are necessary to
bring forward the individuality or Real 'I' with which one's usual level
of Being is not in contact. Our ordinary Being lacks unity. Real 'I'
when it emerges harmonizes the different centres and 'I's. It brings
about unity in multiplicity. Now only individual struggle brings Real
'I' out. It is you centrally yourself, and quite alone, that has to believe
and apply the Work. To do it from another side of yourself is not
individual—as to do it because you ought—from some orthodox notion,
etc.—is not central. Perhaps you can see what is meant by what I will
call central effort. The place where you make effort from must be
genuinely yourself. If I imitate my father, I will follow his example in
myself and then the individuality will be in his hands—in this psychological imitation of him in myself. The father in us will then have the
power. This may seem very obscure. Yet I assure you it can be understood if you think of yourself as having many different groups of 'I's
which form roughly distinct personalities, all of them forming the
Personality as a whole. They are not us. They have, as Christ said,
to be hated—as not being us. Full Being can be thought of when the
Driver is on the box, the horse harnessed, and the Master sitting in the
Carriage. We must realize that this situation can never occur unless we
see clearly that we have to make effort ourselves and to work ourselves,
from ourselves, by transforming life, and every day we must make a
real Work-effort from our own understanding—that is, take the
1035
mechanical effects of life in a new way. Now in regard to Knowledge
and Being and its relation to Understanding, a paper from a lecture
by Mr. Ouspensky will be read:
"I will speak to-day about understanding. What is understanding?
Try to ask yourselves this question, and you will see that you cannot
answer it. This means that you have never thought about it. You
always mixed understanding with knowing. But to know and to understand are two quite different things. First of all, understanding must be
divided into two parts. You can understand a thing or a problem, or an
idea, and you can understand a man—i.e. what he says to you. We
will leave for the moment the case where you can understand a man
without his saying anything, because it is only a development of the
same idea. In order to understand a thing, an idea, or a problem, you
must know all that refers to it, or as much as possible. For instance,
suppose I shew you an old Russian silver rouble. It was a piece of
money the size of a half-crown and corresponding to two shillings and
a penny. You may look at it, study it, see which year it was coined,
find out everything about the Tsar whose portrait is on one side, weigh
it, even make a chemical analysis and find out the exact quantity of
silver contained in it. You can learn what the word 'rouble' means and
how it came into use. You can learn all these things, and probably
many more, but you will never understand it and its meaning, if you do not
find out that before the War its purchase-power corresponded in many
cases to a present-day English penny farthing. If you find this out you
will understand something about a rouble and also perhaps about some
other things, because the understanding of one thing immediately leads
to the understanding of many other things.
"Now if we ask ourselves what does it mean to understand or not
understand a man, we must first think of a case where we speak different
languages from a man and have no language in common. Naturally we
cannot understand one another. We must have a common language or
agree on certain signs or symbols by which we will designate things.
But suppose during a conversation with a man you disagree about the
meaning of certain words or signs or symbols. You again cease to
understand one another. From this follows the principle that you cannot
understand and disagree. In ordinary conversation we say very often:
'I understand him but I do not agree with him.' From the point of
view of the system we are studying this is impossible. If you understand
a man you agree with him: if you disagree with him you do not understand him. It is difficult to accept this idea and it means that it is
difficult to understand it.
"Let us try to understand more clearly what understanding is. There
are two sides in a man which must develop in the gradual course of his
transformation. These are: his Knowledge and his Being. I have already
spoken many times about the necessity for the development of knowledge, particularly self-knowledge, and you can easily understand the
idea of different levels of knowledge and the relativity of knowledge.
1036
What people do not understand in most cases is the necessity for the
development of their Being, or the possibility of very different levels of
Being. Now, what does Being mean?
"A Russian philosopher, Vladimir Solovieff, used the term 'Being'
in his writings. He spoke about the being of a stone, the being of a
plant, the being of an animal, the being of a man, and the Divine Being.
This is better than the ordinary concept because in ordinary understanding the being of a man is not regarded as in any way different from the
being of a stone, a plant, or an animal, which exist exactly as a man
exists. In reality they exist quite differently. But Solovieff's division is
not sufficient. I have already explained that from the point of view of
the system, Man is divided into seven concepts: Man No. 1, Man No. 2,
3, 4, 5, 6, and No. 7 Man. This means seven degrees or categories of
Being; Being No. 1, Being No. 2, Being No. 3 and so on. In addition to
this, we already know still finer divisions. We know that men 1, 2 and
3 can also be very different: they may live entirely under influences
'A'; they may be equally affected by influences 'A' and 'B'; they may
be more under influences 'B' than influences 'A'; they may have 'Magnetic Centre'; they may have come into contact with influences 'C';
they may be on their way to becoming men No. 4. All these states
mean different levels of Being.
"The idea of Being entered into the very essence of thinking and
speaking about Man in religious thought, and all other divisions of men
were regarded as unimportant in comparison with this. Men were
divided into saints, righteous men, good men, bad men, sinners, repentant sinners, unrepentant sinners, heretics, unbelievers, and so on. All
these definitions referred to the difference in Being. In modern thought
people pay no attention to Being; on the contrary, they think that the
more discrepancies and contradictions there are in a man's Being, the
more interesting and brilliant he can be. It is generally, although
silently, admitted, that a man can be given to lying, that he can be
selfish, unreliable, even perverted, and yet be a great scientist or a great
philosopher, or a great artist. Of course this is quite impossible. This
incompatibility of different features of one's Being, which is generally
regarded as originality, in reality means weakness. One cannot be a
great scholar or a great thinker with a perverted or an inconsistent
mind, just as one cannot be a prize-fighter or a circus-athlete with
consumption. The idea that a really good professor must always forget
his umbrella everywhere needs revising. At any rate from the point of
view of schools the professor would have been advised first of all to
learn not to forget his umbrella.
"I hope it is now clear what Being means, and why it must grow
and develop parallel with Knowledge. If Knowledge outgrows Being
or Being outgrows Knowledge, it always results in a one-sided development, and a one-sided development cannot go far. It is bound to come
to some inner contradictions of a serious nature and stop there. Some
time later we may speak about the results of one-sided development,
1037
but happily they do not often happen in life and we can leave them
now.
"We return now to the question of understanding. Having explained the difference between Knowledge and Being, and the connection between the one and the other, I can definitely say what
understanding is. Understanding is the arithmetical mean between Knowledge and Being. You know what an arithmetical mean is? It is a
quantity lying between two other quantities. For instance, if you take
25 and 15, you add them together and get 40: divide 40 by 2 and you
have 20. 20 is the arithmetical mean between 25 and 15. This explains
the necessity for a simultaneous growth of Knowledge and Being. The
growth of only one of them will not increase enough the growth of
the arithmetical mean. This also explains why to understand means to
agree. People who understand one another must have not only an
equal Knowledge, but they must also have an equal Being. Only this
gives a possibility of understanding. Another wrong idea which people
have had always and which particularly belongs to our time, is that
understanding can be different, that people can understand the same
thing differently. This is quite wrong from the point of view of the
system. Understanding cannot be different. There can only be one understanding. But at the same time people understand things differently.
How can we find an explanation for this seeming contradiction?
"In reality there is no contradiction. Understanding means understanding of a part in relation to the whole. But the idea of the whole
can be very different in people according to their Knowledge and
Being. This is why the system is necessary again. People learn to
understand by understanding the system and everything else in relation
to the system. Complete understanding of the system together with
complete understanding of everything in relation to the system makes
the understanding of Man No. 7 which is the only one full understanding possible. Speaking from this point of view there can be no
other understanding, only different approximations to this understanding. But, speaking on an ordinary level, without the idea of a
school or system, there are as many understandings as there are people.
Everyone understands everything in his own way or according to one
or another mechanical training. But this is all a subjective understanding. The way to objective understanding lies through the system
and the school."
1038
Great Amwell House, May 31, 1947
ON VIOLENCE AND UNDERSTANDING
I will contrast Violence with Understanding. Violence is the antithesis to Understanding. All violence has its roots in not understanding
another. It is said in the Work that understanding is the most powerful
force we can create and also that we have to create our lives. So we
have to create understanding. Suppose you feel violent towards another
person, and then let us imagine that you get to know and understand
that person. You will no longer be violent. Now it is also said in the
Work that all violence has its root in negative emotion. I said above
that all violence has its root in not understanding. There is no contradiction in this. It means simply that negative emotions do not lead to
understanding but to violence. The more negative you are the less you
understand and the more violent you tend to be. And since the Work
says that understanding is the most powerful force we can create, it is
clear that continual indulgence in and enjoyment of negative emotions
can only create negative things. Understanding is a positive thing. So
negative emotion cannot create understanding but only misunderstanding. Misunderstanding is not a positive thing. Some people even love
to misunderstand. But this is simply to love negative emotions, for
negative emotions never speak the truth. They are liars—often very
clever liars—but always liars. If you are in a negative state, then
everything is distorted and you understand nothing or misunderstand
everything. Truth can be twisted into a thousand semi-truths—as, for
example, someone said something to you but because you hate the
person you twist it, leave out a bit, alter the sequence, and then you
have a lie and not truth. Yet something in you, if you listen, tells you
that you are lying. What tells you is Buried Conscience which is the
herald of Higher Centres, as John the Baptist of Christ. Unless we had
something in us that can, as it were, chemically, taste negative emotions,
our case would indeed be hopeless. But after a time, through selfobservation, you can tell, or rather, you are told internally, when you
are negative, because a deep unhappiness goes with it. Otherwise we
would have to learn everything inner by copy-book and blackboard.
Fortunately, being born self-developing organisms—as the greatest
experiment so far—we have inner senses and materials in us for this
development. That is, we can create understanding, the most powerful
thing.
Now the Work says a man is his understanding. He is not his size,
his money, position, birth, strength, or his prestige, or distinctions, or
religion. A man is his understanding. So a man, a woman, who understands little or nothing, is, from the standpoint of the Work, of no value.
It is worth while reflecting on this, especially to-day, when there is a
danger of a general loss of understanding over all the Earth. Now,
before mentioning again the Work-definition of Understanding, I will
1039
say, by way of commentary, that to understand one must learn, and
learning is to perceive in oneself the truth of a thing that one is taught
—that the thing is so. This leads to understanding. The Work teaches
that knowing and understanding are quite different. I may know many
things, but may never have perceived in myself the truth of any of them.
In that case, I do not understand what I know, though I may retain it
in my memory. The Work says that Understanding is the arithmetical
mean between one's level of Knowledge and one's level of Being. If
one's Knowledge is represented by the number 20 and one's Being by
the number 10; then if we add 20 and 10, it equals 30. Divide by 2
and the result is 15. 15 is the arithmetical mean between 20 and 10.
This would mean that I understand only a part of what I know.
Now have you reflected for yourselves on why Being is necessary
for Understanding and why Knowledge alone does not give Understanding? When a man perceives in himself the truth of something he
has come to know—let us say, that mankind is asleep—he then receives
this truth in himself and acknowledges it. But only when he sees the
truth of it in himself. It then combines with his Being. It is Being that
receives Knowledge and transforms it into Understanding—otherwise
Knowledge remains chiefly in the memory and does not affect the man
himself as a man. The quality of the reception of Knowledge therefore
depends on the level of Being. Low Being can receive little or nothing
and Knowledge given to low Being can only be used in a wrong way
and not rightly understood. This is the problem of Knowledge and
Being. We have to be constantly reminded of it. It is, in fact, one of
the greatest problems that Conscious Man is faced with in trying to lift
mankind to a higher level of development. Knowledge alone cannot
do this.
Now we will return to work on Being as taught in this system. We
have to work on:
Knowledge of our Being,
Self-Remembering,
Non-Identifying,
Non-Considering.
By self-observation, according to the discipline of the Work, we
come to Knowledge of our Being—namely, that we do not remember
ourselves. By the same means, we come to the Knowledge that we
identify, and of what we identify with, especially. Finally, we begin to
know what our chief forms of internal considering are. All this is
knowledge of our Being. There are also other things that we have to
observe and get to know, but we are only speaking now of those
mentioned above. To become conscious of these things "saves time".
I refer to the self-evolution that is required of everyone. A person not
conscious of his Being cannot change. There is a Way called the Way
of Good Householder. But this is very long. One should work—while
it is day. (Things have to be brought to the light to change. Light is
consciousness.)
1040
Now I will add to the list knowledge of one's negative emotions.
In O.'s teaching of this system he particularly dwelt on this part of it
and the importance of first observing and then separating from one's
negative states. In this connection he spoke of violence and how
violence destroyed everything in us like an outbreak of fire, and how
one moment of violence could put a person back to the beginning. He
indicated early that the 4th Way was not lady-like and could produce
violence in people, but always said that one has to understand why
things are said and done as they are. To react with violence is the
easiest of all things. To understand is the most difficult. I said last
time that external considering is essential for understanding anyone. It
has two sides, putting yourself in the position of the other person and
putting the other person in your position. Now it might be said that
when you get violent you come to the limit or end of your Being.
Capacity for endurance is a sign of Being. Small Being, which only
loves itself, soon reaches its limit and becomes violent. In violence one
is totally asleep and has no understanding. The overcoming of violence
is one of the things spoken of in the Work. The more you see others
in yourself and yourself in others, the more understanding and the less
violence you have. And the more you realize as a fact your own
nothingness, the less violence. In the Gospels this is called Consciousness
of Neighbour and Consciousness of God.
Great Amwell House, June 7, 1947
ON CENTRES AND PARTS OF CENTRES
The mechanical reception of impressions can only feed mechanical
parts of centres. But when impressions are taken in, say, with a sense
of wonder or delight, they fall on emotional divisions of centres. When
they are taken in by directed attention and individual mental effort
they fall on intellectual divisions. Now a negative impression will go to
its proper place—namely, negative parts of centres. Impressions taken
in of a person one freely dislikes will feed negative emotional part. This
then becomes stored with energy and will discharge itself on anyone
from a trifling cause—i.e. one will become violent over nothing.
Negative literature and films of crime, violence, hatred, etc., if identified
with, all feed the negative part of Emotional Centre and store it with
energy. A negative book can do this—if one reads it with identifying.
So we have to learn to take impressions in more consciously and not
identify with negative impressions. Learn to be very careful in all this.
This is a form of Self-Remembering and the energy it uses is drawn out
of the negative impressions. People imagine, however, that when they
are alone or no one is looking, they can indulge in as many negative
1041
thoughts as they like. In this way they increase the material for making
negative emotions, which sooner or later will wish to rush forth and
attack someone and hurt them. All negative emotions desire to hurt,
and at the bottom of them are unlimited forms of violence. Continually
making accounts against others stores up big material for the manufacture
of negative emotions which if they cannot attack others attack oneself.
The only remedy is not to consent to negative impressions—that is, to
be sufficiently awake to prevent these impressions from automatically
going right home to the negative part of Emotional Centre. I speak
of outer impressions and also of inner impressions derived chiefly from
thought or memory or imagination. The uncontrolled working of
imagination can feed negative emotions strongly. That is why they go
on and on. You can always tell if you have identified, and so let pass
a negative impression, if you can listen to your inner state. We are
supposed to have a good filter—that does not eventually let pass any
infectious poisonous germs. Yes—but have you realized this? Have you
begun this aspect of the Work on yourself? Or do you let everything
pass unfiltered?
Now what can we understand practically of all this? We have to
understand that impressions can fall on different parts of centres and that
impressions of outer life, of people, etc., coming in via the senses, can
be directed and need not fall always on one sore place. We actually
have the power, if we develop it, of conscious effort to make impressions
fall on new places in ourselves. Now there are very many new places in
us, scarcely used. For this reason we will study our Being again from
the angle of centres and parts of centres. It will then be possible to
grasp better how our Being, as it is, is on different levels—some parts
being more mechanical and so lower and some less mechanical and so
higher in level. A man who lives wholly in mechanical divisions of
centres cannot change his Being. The first step is self-observation.
This is never mechanical—that is, a man or a woman cannot observe
themselves mechanically. It requires directed attention to observe
oneself and attention requires consciousness, or rather, the act of attention puts us at once into more conscious parts of centres. It is the same
with Self-Remembering. No one can remember himself mechanically.
Full Self-Remembering requires full consciousness. In this connection
O. spoke as follows:
"Now we must return again to the study of centres and to the study
of attention and Self-Remembering which are the only ways to understanding. Besides the division into two parts, positive and negative,
which, as we saw, is not the same in different centres, each of the 4
centres is divided into 3 parts. These 3 parts correspond to the
divisions of centres themselves. The first part is "mechanical", including
moving and instinctive principles; the second is "emotional"; and the
third is "intellectual". The following diagram shews the position of
parts in the Intellectual Centre:
1042
Man as a 3-Storey House
1043
"The centre is divided into positive and negative parts, and each of
these two parts is divided into 3 parts, so that the Intellectual Centre
actually consists of 6 parts. Each of these 6 parts in its own turn is
divided into 3 parts: mechanical, emotional and intellectual. But
about these we will speak later, with the exception of only one part,
mechanical part of Intellectual Centre, about which I will speak
presently. The meaning of the division of a centre into 3 parts is very
simple. A mechanical part works almost automatically: it does not
require any attention. But because of this it cannot adapt itself to a
change of events and continues to work in the way it started, when
circumstances have completely changed. In the Intellectual Centre
the mechanical part includes in itself all the work of registration of
memories, associations, and impressions. This is all that it should do
normally—i.e. when other parts do their work. It should never reply
to questions addressed to the whole centre, and it should never decide
anything, but unfortunately it is always ready to decide and it always
replies to all sorts of questions in a narrow and very limited way, in
ready-made phrases, in slang expressions, in party-maxims, etc. This
part has its own name: it is called 'formatory apparatus' or sometimes
'formatory centre'.
"It is possible to distinguish 3 parts in the formatory apparatus:
mechanical (purely automatic) like mechanical repetition of some words
heard or read, emotional (curiosity, inquisitiveness and undirected
imagination) and intellectual (shrewdness, craftiness, cautiousness).
Many people, particularly people No. 1, live all their lives with
'formatory apparatus' only, never touching other parts of their Intellectual Centre. For all immediate needs of life, for receiving 'A'
influences and responding to them, formatory apparatus is quite
sufficient. They are stereotyped people—-just machines.
"The emotional part of the Intellectual Centre consists chiefly of
what is called an intellectual emotion—i.e. desire to know, desire to
understand, satisfaction of knowing, dissatisfaction of not knowing,
pleasure of discovery. Work of the emotional part requires full attention,
but in this part of the centre attention does not require any effort. It is attracted
and kept by the subject itself.
"The intellectual part of Intellectual Centre includes in itself a
capacity for creation, construction, invention and discovery. It cannot
work without attention, but the attention in this part of the centre must be
controlled and kept there by will and effort.
"This is the chief point in studying parts of centres. If we take them
from the point of view of attention we will know at once in which parts
of centres we are. Without attention, or with attention wandering, we
are in the mechanical parts; with the attention attracted by a subject
of thought or consideration we are in the emotional part; and with the
attention controlled and kept on our subject by will we are in the
intellectual part. At the same time it shews the way to higher parts
of centres. By studying attention and trying to control it, we compel
1044
ourselves to work in higher parts of centres, because the same principle
refers to all the centres equally, although it may not be so easy for us to
distinguish different parts in other centres.
"Let us take Emotional Centre. I will not speak at the present
moment about negative emotions. We will take only the division of the
centre into 3 parts: mechanical, emotional and intellectual. The
mechanical part consists of the cheapest kind of ready-made humour
and the rough sense of the comic, love of excitement, spectacular shows,
pageantry, sentimentality, love of being in a crowd, all kinds of crowdemotions, and all kinds of lower half-animal emotions, unconscious
cruelty, selfishness, cowardice, envy, jealousy, and so on. The emotional
part may be very different in different people. It may include in itself
religious emotion, aesthetic emotion, moral emotion, and may lead to
Conscience, but with identification on its negative side it may be something quite different—it may be very cruel, obstinate, and cold, and
jealous, only in a less primitive way than the mechanical part. The
intellectual part (with the help of the intellectual parts of the Moving
and Instinctive Centres) includes in itself the power of artistic creation.
In cases where the intellectual parts of the Moving and Instinctive
Centres, which are necessary for the natural manifestation of the creative
faculties, are not educated enough or do not correspond to it in their
development, it manifests itself in dreams. This explains the beautiful
and artistic dreams of otherwise quite inartistic people. Also the intellectual part of the Emotional Centre is the chief seat of the Magnetic
Centre."
1045
Man as a 3-Storey House
1046
Great Amwell House, June 14, 1947
FURTHER NOTE ON VIOLENCE AND UNDERSTANDING
VIOLENCE AND FEAR
We spoke recently about understanding and how it is the most
powerful force we can create. Force by itself without understanding
naturally will tend to pass into violence. When a man acts through
violence, he acts without understanding. Violence lies in the self-will.
Now when a man acts through his understanding he acts from the best
in him in regard to his level of knowledge and his level of being. The
quality of his will, which chiefly belongs to the side of his being and
in a mechanical man is the resultant of his feelings and desires, and the
quality of his learning, which chiefly belongs to the side of his knowledge,
will determine whether under any given circumstances the man will
act from violence or understanding. We can probably agree that we
know better than we act. This means the level of being, which is that
which acts, is lower than the level of knowledge, and so we often act
from violence.
Let me remind you again that in the Work people are looked at
from two sides—the level of their knowledge and the level of their being.
It is useful to look at everyone from this angle, especially at oneself.
The question is not merely: "What does the man know or where has
he been or what job has he?" but also "What is he like? What kind of
man is he? Is he, for example, quarrelsome? or conceited? or unreliable? or a thief? a liar? a slanderer?" For all these belong
to the quality of being. Now it is difficult and at first impossible
to observe oneself when one is in a state of violence because, as was
said recently, when one is in a state of violence one is completely
asleep. One can, however, observe the state afterwards to a certain
extent. The Intellectual Centre will probably remember some of the
expressions used and the Moving Centre will have recorded some of
the gestures. But you will not be able to recall the emotion itself. When
you pass out of a particular emotional state it seems remote, even unreal.
When you pass into it again nothing is closer and more real. Take, for
example, the state of fear, because we have to speak briefly about it.
We know how, when we are not in a state of fear, fear seems unreal.
Just think what things would be like if we could remember in the
Emotional Centre the horrors of war and feel the emotions again at
will. But we cannot—and so everything goes on as it does. Ah, if we
could in our personal life remember at will some healing emotions that
visited us.
Now there are, broadly speaking, two kinds of fear. There is
instinctive fear—that is, fear originating in the emotional division of the
Instinctive Centre. This is present in us and in all animals, but of
course differently orientated. This fear is stimulated only by the direct
1047
sensory impression of danger. It excites a secretion from the adrenal
glands and releases material that activates the muscles—either for attack
or for defence. This substance, adrenalin, although constantly manufactured in small quantities under normal safe conditions, and in excess
under abnormal unsafe conditions, can in a certain disease called
Addison's Disease be absent. In this case, the man is inert muscularly
—practically unable to perform any muscular action. This is nothing
to do with being lazy. From the angle of the Work, 3rd Force is
lacking. Now there is another origin of fear which does not arise only
when the senses recognize danger. This fear is situated in the Emotional
Centre and so is intimately connected with emotional imagination.
Imagination is not nonsense—except in a literal sense—i.e. not springing from sense. It is a very powerful thing. It is useless to say to a
person: "It is nothing but imagination." To say a thing like that merely
shews your ignorance, your lack of psychological understanding—for
imagination, undirected imagination, exerts an incalculable influence
on sleeping humanity. Suppose a person is always imaginatively afraid.
This arises from the Emotional Centre. He is afraid he may be buried
alive, or afraid he has a serious illness, or afraid he will be suddenly
attacked, or afraid he will fail in his exams, or that he may lose his
money or position, and so on. All this is fear arising from the Emotional
Centre and of course it is negative—that is, it arises from the manifold
activities of the negative part of Emotional Centre. It is not based on
an actual sense-given situation. A rabbit, seeing a dog, dives into the
burrow. Its fear is from the Instinctive Centre—a direct response to a
sensory stimulus. After a time, the rabbit emerges again. Just imagine
if rabbits had emotional imaginative fear! They would never appear
above ground. It is wonderful how they do. But this is not bravery.
Now fear in Man leads to violence in many different ways. It could
be said that a man may be taught to control instinctive fear, especially
by discipline, but that to control emotional fear is far more difficult.
It is indeed impossible, unless he has a form of faith, vision and belief,
through which he knows that he can do nothing and be nothing by
himself, and that as long as he remembers himself he will be helped,
realizing that his life is not from himself. This faith, this belief, this
vision, is called "catching the rope" in the Work and it heals the
Emotional Centre. But if a man ascribes his life to himself, if he
attributes everything he does—even digesting his food and making his
heart beat—to himself, then his Emotional Centre is necessarily all
wrong and, in fact, upside down. It is not internal considering that will
lift fear, but external considering. He knows only self-emotions. He
loves only himself. It is not this love that is meant in the phrase: "Love
casteth out fear". As I said, it is not internal considering that will
lift fear, but external considering. I will ask once more: "How
do you move? How do you think? How do you feel?" In short,
the Emotional Centre is wrong unless it is increasingly susceptible to
the feelings that come from ideas such as that we did not create our1048
selves and that this life is not explicable in terms of itself. Now, all the
emotions opened up by sufficient contact with the Work begin to purify
the Emotional Centre and lessen fear. That leads to the elimination of
fear—and so to the gradual cessation of violence arising from this source.
A man who only believes in himself must obviously have many unnecessary fears which may lead to violence. He will naturally suspect others.
Suspicion gives rise easily to violence. With the decline of vision to-day
there is automatically a rise in suspicion and fear on all sides. You know
the kind of man who suddenly walks up to you and says: "You are not
laughing at me, by any chance?" Now such a man, believing in himself, attributing everything to himself, admiring himself, and having
many amazing pictures of himself, will tend to violence because, for one
reason, he cannot laugh at himself. If one were to say to him: "I am
laughing at an 'I' in you, but not at you", I am afraid you would
measure your length on the floor.
Now as regards the purification of the Emotional Centre. Since we
ascribe everything to ourselves, even our brains, we have only selfemotions. Self-emotions may lead eventually to violence. I advise some
of you to read Mr. Ouspensky's chapter on the emotions in his first
book "Tertium Organum".
Now on the practical side—all this Work is about making what lies in
your Being more and more conscious—that is, bringing out into the light of
consciousness what has always acted mechanically in you so far and
perhaps spoilt your life. In this respect it is useful to observe what kind
of fear makes you violent. Do you fear not to be properly treated, for
instance? (I am not speaking of instinctive fear). If you begin to see
the connection between some forms of violence and some not hitherto
realized or acknowledged fear, then you will find that this connection,
exposed more and more to the light of consciousness (by means of selfobservation) will operate less and less powerfully. In other words,
whereas you reacted mechanically, now you see and begin to act consciously. This is a change of being.
Great Amwell House, June 21, 1947
COMMENTARY ON PSYCHO-TRANSFORMISM
We return once more to the idea of psychological transformation.
We must understand that the main ideas of this Work come round in
a rotation. They cannot be spoken of all together, so a rotation is
necessary. This Work has been tentatively called psycho-transformism.
To-day we speak again about psycho-transformism, in order to understand more what is meant by the term. A man, a woman, by means of
Self-Remembering can transform their lives. They cannot transform life
1049
itself, but their own lives, their relationship to life. You cannot change
life itself, the recurring circle of events that constitute life and history,
but you can change your relation to them by changing your attitude to
them. This is one aspect of psychological transformation—or psychotransformism. But to effect it, you must change your attitude to yourself. You cannot, by having the same ideas about yourself, change
yourself, and if you cannot change yourself you cannot change the effect
of life upon you. One has heard this said repeatedly. But one does not
perhaps yet see what it means. It means, if you remain the same, life
for you will be the same, and then the question of psychological transformation does not arise. That is, it is not for you—so I suggest you
do not bother about it. However the whole Work is about self-change.
If you think this is an extraordinary idea, then, I will add, do not bother
about the Work.
Now the Work begins with you yourself. It starts with the observation of yourself—that is, with drawing slowly into consciousness of
yourself all sorts of things that belong to your Being of which you are
unaware. This alters your idea of yourself. A man must "know himself." That is, he must become more and more conscious of himself—so
conscious, in fact, that, for example, when he is talking he is conscious
of which 'I' is speaking and can notice what it is saying and not identify
with it. This is inner separation. This is especially difficult, in this case,
because when we are in action we are usually most asleep—that is,
least conscious—and one of our commonest actions is talking. If you do
not believe it, watch another person using one of his typical gramophone
records, such as his adventures or successes, before a new audience.
Talking is the most mechanical action. But one can be conscious of this
most mechanical action. One can observe it while it is going on. Then
one is conscious of what is mechanically going on. This seems paradoxical. But try it and see for yourself. It needs a very light touch. The
first object is to observe oneself without criticism. We are told to observe,
not stop. So one can observe one is talking mechanically and, as I said,
notice which 'I' is speaking, without checking it. If you begin to
criticize it, it will stop, and so you will learn nothing further. In this
commentary, I will call this the first necessary stage in psycho-transformism—this developed power of being conscious of one's mechanicalness and not stopping it. If you keep on trying to stop things, you cannot
see them. Our aim at first is not to stop, but to see, to become conscious
of. Now, in this connection, as you know, the Work teaches that the
realization of one's mechanicalness is one of the first real experiences of SelfRemembering. It is easy to see why. Hitherto you have taken yourself
seriously. You have identified with everything in yourself, with family,
money, position, etc. You have said 'I' to everything. Then there is a
brief vibration of greater consciousness and you suddenly see that all you
took so seriously as yourself is machinery and not you. You then realize
your mechanicalness. Now this introduces us to the idea of psychotransformism. Self-change is not possible if one can be only what one
1050
is. I mean that, were what we are all that we could possibly be, no
transformation would be possible. But the Work says we are only at
the beginning of ourselves, and calls us seeds. Take our consciousness:
the Work says we are not conscious and that Western psychology makes
a fundamental error in taking Man as a conscious Being. There is a
ladder of Consciousness. We seek the next rungs—called the State of
Self-Remembering, Self-Consciousness or Self-Awareness. As we ascend
this ladder everything changes. It is a magic lift. Imagine a seed in
this lift. If it ascends it becomes a tree: if it descends it becomes a seed
again. This is clearly not a 3-dimensional lift. In 3-dimensional space
one goes up and down and remains the same, save perhaps for being
worse-tempered than ever.
When we know this magic lift, which is in everyone, we know that
going up in it requires the greatest care and valuation and that everything false in us can make us fall straight down instantly, I will put it
more simply. You cannot rightly go up to a higher level of Being if you
go up clinging to all the false notions and values that belong to a lower
level. For example, if you cannot stop wanting what you think you want
you certainly cannot go up with intelligent experience in this magic lift,
and so you render yourself liable to be suddenly hurled down. This
means no real valuations save those of False Personality. All this
belongs to the Work teaching about Magnetic Centre and sense of scale.
Of course, if everything is the same to you—as when you only want to
be a popular success whether in life or in the Work—then you have no
sense of real inner valuation and so no sense of scale. Then it is as if
your inner lift is not present and instead there are precipices, height and
depth without means. Now the lift is means between height and depth
and at every floor it stops and we should realize new feelings and
insights: and so we can be taught. But some cannot even be taught,
simply because they live in the conviction that they are right and know
all to be known. Just imagine the state of a man who in this way cannot see that his minute knowledge compared with his ignorance is
incommensurable. Yet people live in this illusion—that is, under
a definite hypnotism among the many forms of hypnotism that act on
humanity to keep them asleep.
Now the realization of one's mechanicalness and the realization of
one's ignorance—for all knowledge leads into mystery—these two
realizations are necessary for any transformation of oneself to take place.
Why? Because they weaken the hold of the acquired Personality.
Unless the grip of the Personality is weakened no psycho-transformism is
possible. In other words the background of one's mind must change and
a new, deeper thinking begin. This changes the attitude to life and the
attitude to oneself. Attitudes begin in Mental Centre. Change the mind,
and attitudes change. And to change the mind the habitual little meagre
ways of thinking must change. This Work is to make us think in a new
way. Why? Because only in this way can we change attitudes. Mr. Ouspensky said: "If attitudes do not change, nothing can change in oneself."
1051
Now let us come, as it were, from background more into foreground.
How by practical work can a man begin to transform himself? I said
just now that if you cannot stop wanting what you think you want you
cannot really change. I will give a simpler example: an obstinate man
has a picture of himself as being a very reasonable man. After, say, a
considerable time—several years at least—he begins to suspect his
picture—that is, what he was not conscious of before begins to enter his
Consciousness. He begins to be conscious of the self-fact that he really
is obstinate and finally sees it is so. What is the result? By this increase of
consciousness his Being changes. That is, a small transformation of Being
takes place. It may not be merely small—it may mean that many other
things in his Being can readjust themselves—especially if unrecognized,
and so unacknowledged, obstinacy has anything to do with his Chief
Feature. If so, the whole man will begin to change—that is, undergo a
transformation.
Now, another example from a different angle. You take a thing, an
event, always in the same way. You always react mechanically to it.
You have no idea that although you cannot change the event in life
you can alter the way you react to it. I can only say, as I have said often
before, if you can see it this means by experience you have something of
great value in your hands. However, people are so glued down to the
familiar that they almost resent the idea of taking things differently.
There is always this hurt feeling in the Work. In the Gospels it is called
"being offended". Most people who met Christ were very offended.
Now if you could start the day from the sense of the utter mystery of
your life you would begin to understand something about psycho-transformism. But you pick up your to-day self from your yesterday-self and
so carry on everything as before. You think that the familiar is right
and so remain the same. You do not understand what was meant when
it was said that those born of the spirit are unpredictable. Now if you
worship the same, you transform nothing. You turn even what might
be new into the old. In that case, certainly, you do not remember
yourself and you remain a machine. You remember only the wrong self
—what is not you. So you carry all the negative states of yesterday into
to-day untransformed.
1052
Great Amwell House, June 28, 1947
INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT
A question was asked recently about the difference between instinct
and intelligence. Now one definition of intelligence, used in the Work, is
that it is the "power of adaptation". In animals, birds, and insects
instinct may be highly developed and yet little or no power of adaptation
may be present. For example, a bird, say, can only make its nest in a
certain way and if interrupted has to start all over again from the
beginning—that is, from Do. Instinctive Centre seems to work in nature
directly by the Law of Octaves—the stage Do leading to and exciting
Re, and the stage Re exciting Mi, and so on. In biological science, the
characteristic "all or nothing" is sometimes applied to the working of
the instincts. That is, there is nothing adapted. So, in other words, the
power of adaptation is not a marked feature of the Instinctive Centre.
To act instinctively is therefore not the same as intelligence.
Now it has been noticed that the power of adaptation is related to
the size of the brain. A living creature with a very small brain and
therefore comparatively few brain-cells has little or no power of
adaptation, although it may perform most complex movements and
make complex things. Now every living thing has its own special form
or pattern of Instinctive Centre which is its life-director and gives it
meaning. It would be no use creating an animal without creating a
life for it to live. The animal would be meaningless. The Work says
that Instinctive Centre at birth in us is not blank, as, say, the Intellectual Centre, but is highly developed and gives us our early meanings.
The Instinctive Centre, then, may be thought of as being similar to a
particular disc inserted into the body, just as a record is into a gramophone. The "tune" on the record is already written on it. The form
of the body in each creature is of course adapted to the record. It would
be odd and amazing if the brain of a fly were inserted into a dog. Now
the size of the brain is connected with the quantity of association-areas,
as they are called, and it is upon these so-called silent areas that the
powers of adaptation depend, in contrast to compulsory single-track
instinctive behaviour. There are vast nerve-tracts and millions of fibres
ascending to the brain which carry inwards all the sense-impressions
from the external world. There are vast nerve-tracts and fibres that
descend from the brain and which terminate in the hundreds of
thousands of muscle-bundles that produce action. Between these two
sets of nerve-tissues lie the association-areas, owing to which a stimulus
coming from, say, a prick of a pin, need not follow only one track and
cause, say, a cry. We must remind ourselves that there are about 14,000
million separate brain-cells or small minds in an adult European, each
with about 100 connections with one another. This is the physical basis
of associations and associative pathways. We, of course, use only a very
few—so much of the brain seems useless. In short, we have far more
1053
than we need for ordinary life and this is surprising if the modern
theories of evolution by mechanical selection are correct. If we have
extra, how can that be mechanical selection? All these associative paths,
these brain-cells that endure for our life-time, as distinct from body-cells,
form the underlying basis of the power of adaptation. To-day we will
speak briefly of associations and adaptation and the connection of these
with Work-terms, Self-Remembering and thinking in a new way—that
is, μετάνοια, so much used in the New Testament and so badly
translated as repentance.
In this Work we are studying through the method of self-observation
to become increasingly conscious of how we take things as we are
now. This is the first step—to know oneself, to become aware of one's
mechanicalness which one always accepts as "oneself"—that is, to
realize that we react in the same way. But in this Work we are also
studying how not to take things in the same way. This is the second step
and it is called Self-Remembering. It is called the First Conscious Shock
that we can give the human machine and it depends for its application
on a development of consciousness at the point of reception of impressions,
and its starting-point is self-observation. A man who can be conscious
simultaneously of the exciting stimulus coming in, say, a person, and
the mechanical response, is already at that level of consciousness called
in the Work the State of Self-Remembering. This is a higher state of
Consciousness. In general, Man is asleep in his mechanicalness and so
the world is as it is—that is, Humanity is asleep. Now if the stimulus
arising from without always calls up the same reaction, the same
response, the same feelings and words, from within, it can be said that
such a person is not intelligent. Why? Because he has no power of
adaptation. The same associations are followed, the same reply is made.
You may ask: "Oh, we all know such people." But you yourself are like
that. You are a machine too and only by struggling to reach another
level of consciousness can you cease being the machine you are.
Now when you take in impressions voluntarily the associative paths
they follow are different from the paths followed when you take in
impressions involuntarily. In this Work we gradually learn to take in
impressions more and more consciously—-that is, to take in impressions
voluntarily. What does this mean? Voluntarily means this: "I see
myself taking in this impression in this way and notice what response it
makes." If you are in that state something is added to your way of
living. This is the beginning of understanding what the Work is about.
If you have got so far you have already a priceless pearl. You realize
you need not take things as you always have taken things. This is the
First Conscious Shock. This means you have intelligence—that is, that
you can change your automatic way of behaviour. In other words, you
can adapt yourself to changing external life and not be held down to
one path of associations.
1054
Great Amwell House, July 5, 1947
A NOTE ON RELATIONSHIP
Relationship depends on Attitude. With wrong attitude to another
you cannot have relationship. Attitude depends ultimately on three
things:
(1) Attitude towards yourself,
(2) Attitude towards life, which includes the other person,
(3) Attitude towards the Universe.
The interesting thing is that your attitude towards the Universe is
the determining factor. For example, if you believe the Universe is
meaningless and merely happened, then you cannot change your
attitudes. Since attitude is part of your Being, it follows that you cannot
change your attitude, unless you begin to change your Being—that is,
the kind of person you are.
In this Work we study a created Universe, descending in a Scale
from the Absolute, that is fullest meaning, through successive lower
levels of more and more partial meaning. It is for this reason that the
Work speaks so much about the importance of levels, and about reaching
a higher level of Being—and in this respect it says that there are more
conscious people and less conscious people. It does not speak of Man as
one and the same, but of Man on many different levels. It speaks of
different circles of Humanity, mechanical and conscious.
Mechanical people cannot understand one another, and therefore
cannot make right relationship to one another. Relationship depends
on a common understanding. We notice that this is to-day the problem.
In the circle of mechanical humanity people do not understand one
another. For this reason the circle of mechanical humanity is called
"the Circle of Confusion of Tongues" or "Babel". To-night I cannot
speak of relationship between mechanical people—that is, people asleep
—because it does not occur as a conscious act. It depends entirely on
circumstances. I wish to speak only about relationship between two
people who are studying the common language of this Work and who
can therefore begin to understand one another and so make a conscious
relationship. No right relationship can exist save through common
understanding. The keynote of relationship is understanding. Now the
first thing we have to understand with regard to relationship is that we
start off as mechanical people, as different kinds of machines. To begin
by self-observation to see that one is one sort of a machine and so always
reacts in the same way, helps us to understand the other person who is
also a machine and who always reacts in the same way, though differently from the way we react. This is the beginning of conscious
relationship—namely, the gradual realization that we are both
machines. The next stage is for both of us to practise this Work in
relationship to one another. Some people, even after hearing this Work
for many years, never practise it in relationship to one another. They
1055
go about asking what they should do, when all the time they are being
told, for example, of the importance of not identifying with negative
emotions, but they never practise it. This is because they do not yet
feel the Work strongly enough—that is, emotionally enough. It is not
yet real. And also this is due to the fact that they never observe themselves from those points of view that the Work teaches them to observe
themselves from. In other words, the Work is outside them, mere words
and diagrams. They may think that they work on themselves but they
work only in imagination. In short, they cannot divide themselves
into, in my case, "I" and "Nicoll", or, in your case, "you" and
"Smith"—if your name is "Smith". Now unless you can divide yourself into an observing side and an observed side you cannot do this
Work. Why? Because you take yourself for granted. If your name is
Smith, you take Smith for granted, and probably have many pictures,
admirable, of yourself. These self-pictures will fortify Smith and therefore you will always find fault with everyone except yourself. Such a
man will identify with his False Personality and his pictures of himself,
with everything he has acquired, with all his buffers, his prejudices, all
his attitudes, in fact, with everything that constitutes Smith. To all his
contradictory 'I's he will say 'I'. Now from the Work point of view
such a man is in deep sleep. He may be tolerably placed in life—that
is, in sleeping Humanity—but for such a man the Work is useless. The
Work is about a further possible development latent in everyone and
this development begins with a certain "technical" self-observation
along certain lines carefully laid down for us. Only by following the
Work can a man begin to change himself, to separate himself from what
he has hitherto taken as himself. And only in this way can a man begin
to have a conscious relationship to others who are working along the
same directions as he is. You will see I am talking about relationship
from the Work point of view and not from the life point of view. To
see in yourself what you criticize so easily in another person is to begin
to make a conscious relationship.
There are three lines of Work: (1) work on oneself, (2) work in
regard to relationship to other people in the Work, and (3) finally work
that helps the Work in general. The first two lines are really all to do
with conscious relationship, which, as I said, is based on mutual understanding through the study of a system such as this Work which enables
you to speak to one another in the same language and not in terms of
Babel—i.e. the usual rows. Conscious relationship is a very wonderful
thing, however imperfectly it is carried out by us at present. When two
people are trying to make relationship through a common understanding of the Work it will be quite certain that they will find the right way
both to behave and act towards one another. In other words, the Work
will shew them what to do. There is a phrase, sometimes used: "The
Work will find a way"—but this applies only to those who work on
themselves.
Now I will add one practical thing more. If two people cherish—in
1056
fact, love and dote on—their negative emotions and keep on making
mutual inner accounts, one against the other, they will never make
relationship. Why? Simply because neither of them is working. Once
you begin to have negative emotions against another person, whom you
say you love, and enjoy them secretly, you are making it impossible to
have relationship. Love is cancelling all debts. In this Work we are
supposed to be able, after a time, to "non-identify" with our negative
states and not believe in them. This is transcending the situation by
work on a higher level. It is not finding a solution to the situation—it is
transforming the situation—through all the new ideas and force that this
Work can give. But if your narrow self-attitudes remain the same,
nothing can change. The assimilation of the new ideas of this Work
and all the new viewpoints it gives, changes your mind, and since the
primary seat of our attitudes lies in the mind you will realize what was
said at the beginning, that only by new knowledge can your attitude
change. In that esoteric volume, called the New Testament, where
only hints and scraps of esoteric teaching are given, it is taught that
a man must "change his mind" before he can heal himself. Unfortunately the Greek word is translated as "repent". It means really that
a man, a woman, must change their whole outlook and way of thinking
if they themselves wish to be different. Now as long as your Being is
what it is, as long as you are the same person, you will attract the same
life. Your Being, the Work teaches, attracts your life. That is, whether
you marry someone else, or go to the colonies, etc., if your Being remains
what it is, it will attract the same life, the same troubles, and so on.
A new life is only possible by work on oneself—for this can change your
Being. But if you remain a fool, as G. said once, you will always attract
all that belongs to being a fool.
Great Amwell House, July 12, 1947
AIM
In speaking about aim and having aim in this Work it was said on
one occasion that there are three kinds of aim. First there are invented
aims. An invented aim has no practical meaning. A man, for example,
might make it his aim to count the numbers of words beginning with
the letter R in the Bible. And not only that, but he might seriously
think that this would be a Work-aim and would make it possible for
him to become more conscious. Second, there are imaginary aims. An
imaginary aim is based on imagination about oneself. A person, for
example, who imagines he is a good, kind man, makes it his aim to be
still more good and kind. That is, he starts from a picture of himself,
and all pictures of ourselves are formed out of the imagination. Again,
1057
imaginary aim necessarily goes with imaginary work on oneself. People
may imagine they observe themselves and work on themselves and it is
all imagination. Actually, they neither observe themselves nor work
on themselves. Third, there are real aims. There is only one possible
source of real aim. Real aim must grow out of one's own self-study in
relation to the instructions given by this Work. If a man studies himself
along the lines laid down in the Work he will eventually begin to catch
sight of what his real, individual aim must be. Remember that one
man's aim is not another's in the Work. Although the method of selfstudy is the same for all in the Work, it is clear that a No. 1 Man whose
centre of gravity lies in the Instinctive or Moving Centre will have to
work on himself differently from a No. 3 Man whose centre of gravity
lies in the Intellectual Centre. Each, to become balanced, so that all
centres can be equally used, will seem to move as it were in an opposite
direction. But the supreme aim of the Work, to awaken, will be the
same for each of them.
At first, invented aims are necessary in order to see how difficult it is to keep them and how mechanical we are without realizing
it. For instance, a man decides not to sit down until six o'clock. Of
course, this is merely an invented aim. But in trying to keep it he will
observe how many different and contradictory voices speak in him and
he will begin to realize that he is not one 'I' but many 'I's, and many
other things that the Work teaches him, which he has not yet realized
in practical experience. For if a man, a woman, do not apply the Work
to themselves, they never advance an inch, and quite naturally. To
experience and so begin to understand this Work, self-observation is
absolutely necessary. Invented aim is an artificial aid to self-observation
in the early stages. Imaginary aim is useless unless one can observe it
and see how absurd it is in comparison with the direct knowledge of
oneself gained by uncritical self-observation and the special quiet
memory that is formed in consequence.
Real aim, as was said, grows out of one's own study of oneself. It
changes, at different stages of the Work, for what has been done it is
no longer necessary to do. Each stage opens a further stage, as in the
case of a journey. So real aim changes but some things remain. A
man, for example, must always remember himself, although his way of
doing so may change. At first, by self-observation he realizes he does
not remember himself, and realizing all that the Work says about the
necessity of reaching the 3rd State of Consciousness where only help
can reach us, his aim becomes that of trying to find out for himself what
Self-Remembering is. This arises out of his self-study by observation,
for he has seen he is asleep and does not remember himself. This is real
aim, because it is based upon what the Work teaches and upon what
he has seen for himself in the light of the Work and the insight it gives.
In that case, that man may expect a result. But a man who makes
always invented aims that have no relation to what he needs to awaken
cannot expect any result. He does not know how to ask and unless we
1058
know how to ask we cannot receive. When we begin to notice what
puts us asleep we are nearer the possibility of asking aright—that is,
making real aim. For aim is really request to which we desire response.
Great Amwell House, July 19, 1947
FURTHER TALK ON ESSENCE AND PERSONALITY
Essence is what we are born with: Personality is what we acquire
by contact with outer life. Essence is internal to Personality. Personality
surrounds Essence. It forms the outer man, as it were, and Essence
forms the inner man. The relations between the two are very complicated. Both are necessary, for Essence, the real part of us, cannot
grow beyond a certain point without the aid of Personality, the artificial
part of us. One interesting thing is that the Work teaches that these
two parts of us are under different laws. Everything that exists is under
laws. Personality is under what is called in the Work the Law of
Accident and Essence is under the Law of Fate. We begin life under
the Law of Fate, but soon pass under the Law of Accident. But we
should, in later life, pass out of the Law of Accident and come again
under the Law of Fate. These phases correspond to change of signthat is, at first in early life Essence is active; then it becomes passive,
while Personality is forming ; finally it should become active again at
the expense of Personality. Thus one's task in general in the Work is,
after Personality is formed, to make Personality passive. If you remain
in older life dominated by all the opinions, prejudices, buffers, attitudes,
pictures of yourself, etc., that you have acquired in Personality, Essence
cannot grow. The unreal side of you gains the victory. Also you remain
under the Law of Accident. That follows from the unrealness of oneself
and from continuing to do unreal things. One remains then an
imitation or invented man or an imitation or invented woman. Not
only so, but all the worries and anxieties imitated by the Personality
torture the life. People then cannot see how many useless efforts they
make and how they rush after meaningless things. Essence cannot
deceive itself, because it is real. But Personality can deceive Essence.
A man may pretend to himself that he only wishes to help, say, the poor,
and Essence thinks it is so. But Personality wishes to gain power and
cares nothing for the poor. That is, the outer man deceives the inner
man. The power of distinguishing between real and unreal things is
lost in this kind of mill-race in which so often it seems that the ideal is
to "waste no time", etc. Waste no time for what? Now hurry, strain,
worry, anxiety, a wrong sense of duty, a constant inner uproar and all
such states lead only to wrong efforts in useless directions, and strengthen
the hold of Personality. Finally they destroy all connection with
1059
Essence and the person becomes a sort of worried empty shell. For
these states are all illusions, all forms of hypnotism, all little tricks used
by those influences that seek to keep Man asleep on this Earth—and
which they do so successfully. A great cleansing of oneself from
Personality is required in this Work from those who can hear it. If your
name is Smith, then you must work against Smith, for that is the name
of your Personality which is active. For this reason you will find it
necessary really to study and obey what the Work tells you to do and so
apply it to yourself. Smith will be under the Law of Accident. By
beginning to make him passive through the power of this Work you will
draw force into Essence and it will be able to develop. Essence is under
the Law of Fate. A new growth of Essence is something that can never
be taken away from you. It can only happen through what is internally
and genuinely seen and done and never through the external action of
life. A new growth of Essence is not something which one knows or
plans. It takes place when the falseness of Personality is weakened by
genuine inner perception of its unrealness. It means a change in the
level of Being. So the life cannot repeat itself as before since, if Being
changes, it will attract a new life. But if it does not change, it will
attract the same life.
Now I will quote part of a talk on Essence and Personality given by
Mr. Gurdjieff and recorded by Mr. Ouspensky. It begins with a brief
reference to the subject of Will. Mr. Gurdjieff is speaking:
"The question of Will, of one's own will and of another man's will,
is much more complicated than it seems at first glance. A man has not
sufficient will to do—that is, to control himself and all his actions—but
he has sufficient will to obey another person—or obey the Work. And
only in this way can he escape from the Law of Accident. There is no
other way.
"I mentioned before about Fate and Accident in a man's life. We will
now take the meaning of these words in more detail. Fate also exists,
but not for everyone. Most people are separated from their Fate and
live under Law of Accident only. Fate is a result of planetary influences
which correspond to a man's type. We will speak about types later.
In the meantime you must grasp one thing. A man can have the Fate
which corresponds to his type but he practically never does have it.
This arises because Fate has relation to only one part of Man—namely,
to his Essence. It must be understood that Man consists of two parts—
Essence and Personality. Essence in a man is what is his own: Personality
in a man is what 'is not his own'. 'Not his own' means what has come
from outside, what he has learned, or what reflects all traces of external
impressions left in the memory and in the sensations, all words and
movements that have been learned, all feelings created by imitation
—all this is 'not his own', all this is in 'Personality'.
"From the point of view of ordinary psychology, the division of Man
into 'Personality' and 'Essence' is hardly comprehensible. It is more
exact to say that such a division does not exist in psychology at all.
1060
"A small child has no 'Personality' as yet. He is what he really is.
He is 'Essence'. His desires, tastes, likes, dislikes, express his Being such
as it is. But as soon as so-called education begins, 'Personality' begins
to grow. 'Personality' is created partly by the intentional influences of
other people—that is, by 'education'—and partly by involuntary imitation of them by the child itself. In the creation of 'Personality' a great
part is also played by 'resistance' to people around him, and by attempts
to conceal from them something that is 'his own' or 'real'.
"Essence is the truth in Man: Personality is the false. But in proportion as Personality grows, Essence manifests itself more and more rarely
and more and more feebly, and it often happens that Essence stops in
its growth at a very early age and grows no further. It happens very
often that the Essence of a grown-up man, even that of a very intellectual and, in the accepted meaning of the word, highly educated
man, stops at the level of a child of five or six. This means that everything that we see in this man is really foreign. What is his own in Man,
that is in his Essence, is usually only manifested in his instincts and in
his simplest emotions. There are cases, however, where a man's Essence
grows parallel with his Personality. Such cases represent very rare
exceptions, especially in the circumstances of cultured life. Essence has
more chances of development in men who live nearer to nature in
difficult conditions of constant struggles and danger. But as a rule the
Personality of such people is very little developed. They have more of
what is their 'own' but very little of what is 'not their own'—that is to
say, they lack education and instruction, they lack culture. Culture
creates Personality and is at the same time the product and the result
of Personality. We do not realize that the whole of our life, all we call
civilisation, all we call science, philosophy, art, politics, is created by
people's Personality—that is, by what is 'not their own' in them.
"The element that is 'not his own' differs from what is Man's 'own'
by the fact that it can be lost, altered, or taken away by artificial means.
There exists a possibility of experimental verification of the relation of
Personality to Essence. In Eastern schools, ways and means are known,
by the help of which it is possible to separate Man's Personality from
his Essence. For this purpose they sometimes use hypnosis, sometimes
special narcotics, sometimes certain kinds of exercises. If Personality
and Essence are for a time separated in a man by one or another of these
means, two beings are as it were formed in him, who speak in different
voices, have completely different tastes, aims and interests, and one of
these two beings often proves to be on the level of a small child. Continuing the experiment further it is possible to put one of these beings
to sleep, or the experiment may begin by putting to sleep either
Personality or Essence. Certain narcotics have the property of putting
Personality to sleep without affecting Essence. And for a certain time
after taking this narcotic a man's Personality disappears, as it were,
and only his Essence remains. And it happens that a man full of the
most varied and exalted ideas, full of sympathies and antipathies, love
1061
and hatred, attachments, patriotism, habits, tastes, desires, convictions,
suddenly proves quite empty, without thoughts, without feelings,
without convictions, without views. Everything that has agitated him
before now leaves him perfectly indifferent. Sometimes he sees the
artificiality and the imaginary character of his usual moods, or his
high-sounding words, sometimes he simply forgets them as though they
had never existed. Things for which he was ready to sacrifice his life
now appear to him ridiculous, meaningless and unworthy of his attention. All that he can find in himself is a small number of instinctive
inclinations and tastes. He is fond of sweets, he likes warmth, he dislikes
cold, he dislikes the thought of work, or, on the contrary, he likes the
idea of physical movement. And that is all. Sometimes, though very
seldom, and sometimes when it is least expected, Essence proves fully
grown and fully developed in a man, even in cases of undeveloped
Personality, and, in this case, Essence unites together everything that is
serious and real in a man.
"But this very seldom happens. As a rule Man's Essence is either
primitive, savage and childish, or else simply stupid. The development
of Essence depends on work on oneself.
"A very important moment in the work on oneself is when a man
begins to distinguish between his Personality and his Essence. A man's
Real 'I', his individuality, can grow only from his Essence."
Great Amwell House, July 26, 1947
THE IDEA OF PAYMENT IN THE WORK
On one occasion Mr. Ouspensky said: "If we attain happiness before
we have paid for it, we shall not be able to keep it. We shall lose it and
what was happiness turns into pain. We must suffer first and suffer now
to be free from everlasting suffering. And by suffering in the Worksense is meant that suffering that goes with the effort to give up one's
mechanical suffering, to give up useless suffering." "How can this be
done?" was asked. The answer in so many words was: "By not identifying with one's suffering. Nothing is more easy than to suffer. Everyone suffers. But this kind of suffering is not conscious but mechanical
and simply leads to endless unhappiness, and indeed can become a bad
habit that cannot be conquered. All this useless suffering belongs to
the pain-factory of Organic Life that cares nothing for Humanity. It is
an energy used by something else. No one evolves, no one becomes
more conscious by identifying with useless suffering. Some people suffer
if they cannot have their own way even in the smallest detail; even if
it rains when they want to go out they suffer. So everything becomes an
increasing burden.. They are only happy, so to speak, when they are ill."
1062
Mr. Ouspensky said many other things at different times about the
necessity of giving up our suffering. One thing was that when people
speak of sacrificing themselves, or ask what they should sacrifice, they
speak as if they had something real to sacrifice. He said people have
very big ideas about themselves, but really they have nothing of their
own to sacrifice that is worthy enough to be called a sacrifice save their
suffering. "If only," he said, "people would observe their suffering,
whether they shew it or endeavour to conceal it or nurse it in secret,
and would begin to sacrifice it, they would change their level of Being
and find themselves internally in better company. But it is extraordinary how people cling to their suffering and seem to feel they would
cease to have any personal identity if they gave it up."
I asked him whether, if Humanity were at the third level of Consciousness, which it was born with a right to be at, the world would still
be full of useless suffering. He laughed and said: "How could it be?
People would all remember themselves and so would not identify.
Everyone has a grievance. Think of all the negative emotions with
which people identify—despair and horror and depression and dislike
and worry and hate and a hundred others. They do not see that all
this is useless suffering and that they cannot have happiness while they
are behaving like that. They are not fit for it. But if they pay long
enough beforehand by work on themselves, and learn how not to identify
with their bad moods, and separate from them, then they may reach
happiness—yes, on this Earth", and he added: "A man sitting in this
room, appearing just as others, can be in a quite different inner state
and experience quite different emotions and thoughts from everyone
else and yet shew nothing outwardly unusual." Often Mr. Ouspensky
emphasized that there were better states of ourselves and that everyone
knew it. Asked once what the Work is all about, he said: "It is about
reaching a better state of oneself, learning how to, learning what efforts
are needed and what to avoid and knowing how to maintain it. Reflect
on all the Work-teaching practically, if you have not done so already.
Begin to make an effort to see what it is about. It is not very difficult.
Why, for example, does it speak so much about not identifying with
negative states? You must understand," he said, looking on us all, "that
a negative state is not a better state of oneself. It is a worse state. But
some of you do not yet understand."
At the time these words of Mr. Ouspensky seemed to awaken something in me. Although I had heard so often about negative states, it
had not come home to me with any depth that I was so often negative
and that in a negative state one was not better but worse. Negative states
seem to possess an energy of their own and one tends to feel more vivid
and alive when one identifies fully with them—that is, plunges head
over heels into them. Only later does one see that this apparent accession of energy is due to a contraction of the whole being down to a few
narrow, exacting and often relentless 'I's. Then when one has escaped,
say, for a time, from their tyrannical power, one tastes the difference.
1063
When one can taste the difference then one has started to understand
what the Work is about—namely, reaching a better state of oneself.
The Work assures us that this is possible and gives many ideas, diagrams,
etc., concerning this. But it promises nothing. It says that if you value
the teaching, listen to it, and apply it to yourself with sincerity in daily
life, you will get results. But each of you must understand that the
Work is not going to do your three lines of Work for you. In any case, it
would be impossible. You cannot make an effort for someone else who
should make it.
Great Amwell House, September 6, 1947
SEPARATION AND SELF-REMEMBERING
The energy of impressions is used up by the psychic machinery. I
will ask you a question: "What is the difference between a mechanical
and a conscious man receiving impressions?" The answer is that in a
mechanical man, No. 1, 2 or 3, the energy of impressions is not transformed. It is used up in turning rolls or centres, in stimulating different
'I's, in negative states, and in all those mechanical reactions, attitudes,
pictures and thoughts and feelings that men and women insist on
taking as their real selves. In a more conscious person, one who can
separate, this energy derived from incoming impressions is not wholly
used up in working the mechanical psyche, but can pass it and become
transformed into a higher energy. How is this possible? By SelfRemembering. This is called the First Conscious Shock. Mechanical
people—that is, men and women in general—do not give themselves the
First Conscious Shock. They do not remember themselves. For this
they pay many penalties—that is, they are under the Law of Accident
and they, asleep themselves, dwell among sleeping people who cannot
understand one another; nor can they attract the help necessary for
them. Help cannot reach the 2nd State of Consciousness: it can only
reach the 3rd State—which we pass into when we remember ourselves. We cannot realize what penalties people on earth pay for not
remembering themselves, save through studying ourselves when
asleep.
All the absurdities and cruelties of life, all the waste and imbecilities,
all the vain-glory and insincerity, all the lies, all the pretence and
falsities and misunderstandings, are due to one definite cause, as this Work
teaches—namely, people do not remember themselves. In consequence,
they are driven, as by a belt, by constantly changing outer circumstances, war and peace, and so on. Life is constantly changing circumstances. What is it in us that thus is driven? It is the external, acquired
side of us, called Personality. We have an outer and an inner man, an
1064
outer and an inner woman. If the inner were developed in each of us
—the real, essential part—all life would be different and we would no
longer be at the mercy of changing outer circumstances, now having
something internally stable. But for this to take place, the practice of
Self-Remembering is necessary. When a man and a woman remember
themselves, they are no longer Smith, or Mrs. Smith, Robinson, or
Mrs. Robinson, Brown, or Mrs. Brown. In Self-Remembering one does
not remember the Personality, acquired by religion, education and
example, but something behind all this acquired part, which surrounds
Essence and is different in different people and nations so that they can
never agree. For one man merely to remember that he is a Mohammedan or a Sikh or a Hindoo, another that he is a Christian, another
that he is an Arab, another that he is a Jew—or again that he is an
aristocrat, or a doctor, or that he is a labourer, or that he is rich or poor,
good-looking or ugly—all that is not to remember oneself. Each man, each
woman, has at the back of them, deep to Essence within, Real 'I', that
is neither Mohammedan, Christian, Jew nor Arab, aristocrat nor poor
man, good-looking or not. So the Work teaches that when a man or
woman comes to the point of realizing his or her own nothingness, then this
nothingness attracts Real 'I'. For if you are over-swelling with yourself and your virtues and value, how on earth can you come in contact
with anything real? So Self-Remembering, which is endless in its different forms, can never be based on your self-merit, but only on a gradual
feeling—profoundly emotional—and by that is meant the inner perception of the truth about yourself—of your own unreality which hitherto you have taken as yourself. So the Work talks of Imaginary 'I' or
False Personality, and teaches in so many ways that this Imaginary 'I',
with which people advance into life and which continually they suffer
from, must be made passive. I remind you again of what we were told
in France: "Personality has scarcely any right to exist here." Just
reflect what that means.
Now in regard to separation by non-identifying, it is said that in
separating, say, from a negative emotion—that is, struggling not to
identify with it—you must at the same time try to remember yourself,
remember your aim, and remember all the Work means to you so far.
Then the force withdrawn from some typical reaction by separation
passes into Self-Remembering and so does not flood some other mechanical
reaction. This is the beginning of the transformation of the energy of
impressions. That is, Do 48 passes into Re 24 and eventually into
Mi 12.
This short paper is written because of a difficulty that arose in a
sub-group recently. A paper was read in which the following sentence
appeared: "The Work says that we must struggle every day with
identifying and that this struggle takes very many forms, and very many
directions. For example, a man may through his observation realize
that he identifies with someone, and may for a time separate himself
from that particular form of identifying. But he will begin to identify
1065
with something else far more." It was said in the report: "We all felt
at a loss to understand why he should pass into a greater state of
identification subsequent to having observed and separated from one
state." The answer is that if you take force away from one mechanical
reaction it will pass into and strengthen another mechanical reaction
—unless you remember yourself and all the meaning of the Work and
your aim, and so give it a definite direction. If you do, the force of the
Work in you will increase—i.e., you starve yourself to increase the power
of the Work. There is another power apart from your own self-ascribed
power. The power of the Work demands a sacrifice of the self-ascribed
power. To starve yourself to yourself is useless. If you starve a negative
'I' by not identifying and that is all you do, the force liberated will go
to some other negative 'I'. But if you give the force abstracted from the
negative 'I' to the whole sense and meaning and valuation of the Work,
it will be absorbed and stored by all those 'I's which lead eventually to
Real 'I'. People fast or starve to increase their merit. They perform
rituals, etc. But there is a phrase in the Old Testament where God
says: "But have ye fasted unto me?" To fast, say, from negative states
for the sake of the Work means that the power of the Work will increase
in you. To obey the Work is to fast unto the Work. But all this is very
deep and internally sincere.
Great Amwell House, September 13, 1947
THE INNER MAN
"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from
thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should
perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
"And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from
thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should
perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
(Matt. V 29, 30)
How difficult it is to grasp what this means as long as the literal sense
dominates the mind. Of what use to pluck out the right eye or to cut
off the right hand as perhaps some fanatics have done? It is the psychological meaning that matters. What does the eye mean in the ancient
language of parables? Christ said: "The lamp of the body is the eye:
if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light;
but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness."
(Matt. VI 22.) But in saying this it is not meant that the literal eye is
the lamp, but the psychological eye. What is the psychological eye?
It is the eye of the mind. It is how one sees things mentally, not
physically. When a man says: "I think I see what you mean," he does
1066
not refer to his physical eye, but to the eye of his mind. That is, he
means that he thinks he understands what you mean. So to transform
literal into psychological meaning, when Christ says that the eye is the
lamp of the body, it could be written: "The understanding is what
illuminates the mind." According to the quality of the understanding,
so is the mind illuminated with meaning. A low level of understanding
therefore makes the mind dark. The mind will be in darkness because
the understanding is undeveloped or negative.
*
*
*
Why is the right eye to be plucked out if it offends? The right eye
and the right hand, if they offend, are to be got rid of. Why not the left
eye and hand? The right hand is ordinarily the more conscious. The
more conscious side of a man is the external man, the side he makes use
of most: the less conscious side is the inner, deeper man. If the external
man offends or causes offence, in relation to the inner, deeper man, then
that which offends in the external man must be plucked out or cut off.
Why? Because these two men must become one.
The outer man is formed by contact with outer life, to adapt to life.
If we understand this, then it is apparent that the left eye and left hand
could not be plucked out or cut off, for they belong to the inner man.
Esoteric—that is, inner—teaching is about the development of the inner
man, to make it possible for it to control the outer man as a good rider
controls a horse so that they become one. In so far as the acquired
views of the external man (the right eye) offend the growing understanding of the inner man, or the actions of the external man (the right
hand) do the same, then it is a question of plucking out or cutting off
what offends in the outer man—the man acquired from life. For a man
can only grow from his own understanding, which is inner freedom, and
not from his acquired views.
A man with only an outer side developed towards life is a half-man
—a one-sided man in the sense of a man cut longitudinally in half. He
has one leg and arm and half a brain. There are two sides to a man, a
right and left, an outer and an inner. They have to be joined together
to form the entire man. The faculties that turn us towards life and
those that turn us towards the soul need equivalent development. The
lost half of us, by remaining lost, renders our existence a half-existence.
So we live with half-meanings. There is an incredible lack of meaning
in each day that we arrange for by forming habits from which we derive
meaning at secondhand. The external man—and so the external mind
—is open to the ambitions, cares, and worries of life. This external
mind, however well-formed, does not and cannot unite with the other
side of the man. By a change in circumstances it can be brought to
nought—and the man perhaps dies, having nothing else. Life is a
picture of people fighting to keep the external man alive. One mistake,
major or minor—and the man falls. Why? Because all the meaning of
1067
himself is in what is outside himself—in the external man which is not
the real man.
Self-esteem, self-liking, self-approbation keep the external man
active. When a man begins to see what he is really like, the false idea
of himself diminishes. This makes it possible for the inner, real but
undeveloped side to grow. But as long as a man believes in what he
imagines himself to be this is impossible. In this connection there are
many spurious ways of saying that one is bad, headstrong, and so on.
All this rests on the vanity of self-approbation and is not really seeing
what one is and knowing it. To say easily that one is bad, etc., is not
to feel its truth. Once a man begins to see straightly what he is like,
he is silent about himself. The danger then is that he may kill himself
unless he is shewn that this is a necessary and definite stage in his inner
development.
Great Amwell House, September 20, 1947
NOTE ON SELF-OBSERVATION
OBSERVATION OF ONE'S MECHANICALNESS
Realizing that your ways are not the only ways, that your views are
not the only views, that your opinions are not the only opinions, that
your values are not the only things to value and that yourself are not the
only possible yourself—all this is necessary in the path of self-change.
Why? Because it weakens Personality. But for it to do so, the realization must be genuine—a matter of direct inner perception. Let us
imagine a man called Mr. Amwell. He says: "I have observed myself,
but I do not see how that helps. I have observed what I say, for
example, but I do not yet understand why I should do so." In short,
Mr. Amwell—who I hope is actually an imaginary person or otherwise
in these days I shall no doubt be liable for libel—I say, Mr. Amwell
does not realize what idea lies behind the Work-teaching concerning
self-observation. He does not see why it is necessary. No doubt he has
never said to himself: "Now I wish to change this or that in myself."
He does not see why he should observe himself. Now the Work says,
for instance, that self-observation is a method of self-change. It says
this quite early. Mr. Amwell says he observes himself, and cites as an
example that he observes what he says but does not see why he should.
He says it makes no difference to him. He adds that it does not change
him in any way and so he cannot see why he should observe himself.
Clearly he hints that it is a waste of time. Let us suppose a conversation
is held with him by the Work itself. The Work says to him: "I notice,
Mr. Amwell, that whenever Tennyson is mentioned you say he was no
1068
good as a poet." Mr. Amwell says: "Yes—that is exactly what I always
say." The Work then asks him: "You dislike hard-boiled eggs, I
believe?" Mr. Amwell says: "Yes, I always tell people that. It is quite
true." The Work then asks him various similar questions to which Mr.
Amwell replies in a similar manner. Maybe there might be one,
resembling Mr. Amwell, who, candidly understanding himself, would
add that he is a little aware that he does say the same things over and
over again and may bore people. But even so there is a considerable
step between such a confession and the deeper recognition that he is
mechanical. He is fixed—crystallized—but does not see it. A man, a
woman, can be very satisfied with their mechanicalness, not because
they see it as mechanicalness, but because they see it as their own
intelligent conscious selves. Long before they get to opening their lips,
their audience knows exactly what gramophone record is going to utter
such solemn truths as that they dislike Tennyson or hard-boiled eggs.
Now one of the first things taught in this Work is the necessity for
realizing one's own mechanicalness through uncritical self-observation.
A man, a woman, very early can become almost completely mechanical.
They say the same things over and over again, they feel the same feelings,
they do the same things. And it is almost as if they dislike the very idea
that they should not continue to be such machines, such bits of sheer
mechanicalness, and awaken from their sleep. They are always upset
by the same events. They are always prejudiced towards the same
people. They like or dislike almost automatically. And, however it
may seem outwardly, if anyone touches them beneath the skin, there is
found a calm self-esteem that is apparently the explanation of their
mechanicalness. That is, beneath the surface they strongly approve of
themselves however they apologize for themselves. Here there is a lack
of connection which results in a certain psychological blindness. For
example, if a person easily says he or she is no good, it means often that
it masks something quite different, such as conceit. There is a lack of
connection, due to a lack of long and sincere observation. The man,
the woman, do not see what they are like on both sides, right and
left. They live in compensatory pictures—often really too modest to
be tolerable to others who sense their other side, which is contradictory.
All this, of course, applies in very complex ways to all of us—namely,
these inner and outer contradictions. A man may seem outwardly
conceited and boastful and within himself feels poor and inadequate
and vice versa. But the opposites are mixed in us in a very strange way.
Now a man should observe what he observes. To observe is difficult.
It needs a conscious effort. You cannot observe yourself mechanically.
That certainly will change nothing. But, in such a case, if you become
cleverer, you will begin to observe that you always observe only two
or three things over and over again. This will not separate you from
your mechanical self. For has not observation now become a very part
of your mechanical self? The function of Observing 'I' is to move
inwards, more and more deeply, so that more and more of yourself can
1069
be seen by it. If Observing 'I' remains on the surface of yourself it
cannot perform its real task, which is to make a man more and more
objective to himself, more and more aware of what he has hitherto
calmly taken as himself. If self-observation is truly carried out and not
blocked by some strong attitude or picture that the man or woman
cannot observe, then it leads to seeing bits of one's life and behaviour
all together. This is called taking photographs of oneself. "One has",
it was once said, "to take a number of full-plate photographs of oneself
and keep them in an album and often look at them." Yes, this will
certainly begin to change you. It will change the typical feeling of 'I'
that you reside in—the usual sense of yourself. For unless that is altered,
nothing can alter.
To return to Mr. Amwell—one wonders if, for instance, he observes
not only what he says but, let me say, his vanity, negative states,
suspicions, jealousies, laziness, his queer pictures of himself, his imitated
attitudes, his fixed opinions, his buffers, his internal considering, or
indeed anything that the Work teaches him to observe. If not, he will
have no real photographs of himself. His album will be empty. Also
he will never reach the state, possible for all who genuinely work—who
genuinely value and apply the Work to themselves—namely, the state
in which it is given to one sometimes to stand aside internally, to be
separated, and to watch the stream of moods, passion, negative thoughts,
worries, hatreds, depressions and bitterness, with which one is usually
wholly identified. So he or she will not be able to understand, for
example, the following quotation I give you from a recent letter:
"Lying in bed in the morning I saw thoughts coming in, jealous
thoughts, anxious thoughts, sad thoughts, self-pitying thoughts, which
followed one another, and seemed to pass through my mind and then
went out again, and they were nothing to do with me at all." Now
to have this experience means that you begin to realize what is inner
freedom. You have heard it sometimes said that this Work is
to give inner freedom. But if a man cannot understand what selfobservation is or if he has always identified himself with everything
he has observed, if he has always said 'I' to it—how can he ever reach
the state illustrated in the above quotation? Try to see what is meant
here for yourselves.
1070
Great Amwell House, September 27, 1947
DIFFERENT 'I'S
A recent question was as follows: "What does it mean that we have
many different 'I's in us?" This question is a good question and everyone in this Work should often ask it of themselves. "What does it mean
that we have many different 'I's in us?" The Work teaches that we are
not a unity, a oneness, but a manyness, a multiplicity. It says in so
many words: "People imagine they are one, a single 'I', and that they
remain always the same. That is, they imagine that they have one
thing they call 'I' and that this 'I', that they imagine they have, always
behaves in the same way." Now the Work calls this Imaginary 'I'.
That is, people who imagine they have a real, permanent 'I', that always
behaves in the same way, actually have Imaginary 'I'. They imagine
they have a real, unchanging, permanent 'I'. But by imagining they
have, they have only Imaginary 'I'. They imagine they have a real,
permanent 'I', but have not. In place of having a real, permanent,
unchanging 'I', they have Imaginary 'I'. And by clinging to this belief,
they cannot ever attain to Real 'I'. Why is this? It is because if you
imagine you have something, you will not want it. Imagination can
supplant reality and does. Imagination works in nearly all the centres,
and supplants what is, or could be, real. If I imagine I have cigarettes
in my drawer I will not go out to get some.
Now the Work is about destroying illusions about ourselves. What
is an illusion about oneself? One illusion is exactly that we possess a
real, permanent, unvarying 'I'. The Work calls this illusion Imaginary
'I'. It is a very good name for it, and when you begin, through selfobservation, to realize that you have no such real, permanent unchanging 'I', you are beginning to move in the direction the Work leads
you into. What is that direction? It is the direction, the journey, to
finding Real 'I'—the 'I' that people imagine they possess already.
People have no Real 'I'. That has to be earned by hard and long Work.
People have many 'I's—not one. They are not a unity, but a multiplicity. Everyone has many different and contradictory 'I's, to each of
which the value of 'I' is given. Through everyone's mouth many
different 'I's speak at different moments. But all this is taken both by
the speaker and by the person hearing him as one 'I' speaking. Yes, the
same mouth is speaking, but not the same 'I'. Unless we begin to see
these different 'I's that speak in our name we cannot change. Why?
Because we cannot separate from them. We take them as ourselves.
When by self-observation a man or woman begins to realize that
he or she is not one real, permanent, unchanging 'I', but is many
different 'I's, they begin to lose an illusion they have hitherto been under.
That is, they begin to move inwardly towards Real 'I'. Real 'I' has
no illusions. Now one 'I' may promise something. But the next 'I'
called up by circumstances knows nothing of this promise or does not
1071
agree with it. All this you must observe and notice in yourselves.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—between these different 'I's there are
partitions or buffers. These prevent us from seeing our contradictions.
The Work says: "If a man had not these buffers—if these buffers were
destroyed suddenly—he would go mad." Why would he go mad? He
would go mad because he would become conscious of all his contradictions. To begin to understand all this it is necessary to be able to
observe for yourself (not because you have been told on the blackboard)
that you are not one 'I' but many different 'I's that take charge of you
at different moments and that are often quite contradictory.
Now try to discuss this Work-teaching of different 'I's and try to
give examples based on real self-observation. Kindly do not begin to
ask what Real 'I' is. Begin with the plain fact that you have not got it,
but in place of it you have many different 'I's, to all of which you say
'I', thus having only Imaginary 'I'. In connection with this teaching
that Man has many different 'I's which, if he aims at internal development, he must observe and see that they are not him—not 'I'—the Work
compares Man mechanical, Man asleep, to a House in Disorder. The
House is full of servants. But there is no Master. Each of the servants
uses the telephone and speaks in the name of the Master. Such is the
inner state of Man.
Great Amwell House, October 4, 1947
FURTHER NOTE ON 'I'S
'I's
AND
LEVELS
OF
BEING
Last time we spoke of different 'I's in us and how we are not one
person but many different persons and how unless we realize this by
direct self-observation we can never begin to understand ourselves or
other people. In this connection we spoke of Real 'I' which it is the aim
of this Work to reach, in place of having our centre of gravity in
Imaginary 'I' that is the source of so much misery and misunderstanding. Just figure to yourself two Imaginary 'I's marrying each other.
The dream-man marries the dream-woman and so on. All this, of
course, can lead nowhere save in romantic novels which usually and
wisely end just when the imaginary hero marries the imaginary heroine
—obviously a difficult starting-point suggesting difficult situations in
the future. It was also said last time that occasionally, even in ordinary
mechanical life, we may experience a momentary trace of Real 'I'. As
was said, this may happen in cases of extreme fatigue, as in war, when
suddenly an access of force comes, or in great danger, also in many
strange ways that cannot be classified, but produce the same result.
1072
By contrast, the usual life of sleep that we are immersed in, when we
identify with everything outside us, and inside us, has an utterly different
taste from those brief, calm but rare moments of touching Real 'I',
which in the Work are called "moments of awakening from sleep" or
"moments of Self-Remembering". The very undeniable difference in
inner taste, in emotional quality, between our ordinary and these
exceptional moments shews us that there is within us some other level
of consciousness, some other centre of gravity and some other level of
experience—and clearly a higher level—that we do not customarily
know. Now in this Work, as in all esoteric teaching, it is said that to
reach a higher level of ourselves, to make contact with 'I's that do not
exist, so to speak, in the basement of the house of our being, efforts on
oneself have to be made. We are told what efforts have to be made very
clearly. For example, to take one line, we are told that a man must
observe himself, he must observe that he is not one but many, that he
must by practical work destroy the illusion that he has Real 'I', he must
get to know by observation some of his prominent 'I's that hitherto he
has mistaken for himself and not identify with them—that is, not say
'I' to them—because what in you you say 'I' to chains you to it. Once
you say 'I' to any thought or feeling it has power over you. In hysteria,
the victim identifies with every sensational and horrifying thought.
There is no power of self-observation and separation. It is something
like thinking that a snake in the grass is you and so not being able to
separate object from subject. There is a mystery here which goes very
deep and cannot be entered into now—save to say that this Work
teaches that mankind is under a definite hypnotic force to keep it asleep
and prevent it from waking up. I will give one hint of this from another
esoteric source. It is said in Isaiah: "The Lord hath poured out upon
you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes. (Is. XXIX 10)
And in the New Testament: "This people's heart is waxed gross, and
their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes they have closed, lest haply
they should perceive with their eyes and hear with their ears, and
understand with their heart . . ." (Matt, XIII 15) This Work merely
says that Man is asleep and that we are born asleep into a world of
sleeping people who are kept asleep and spend their time in killing one
another. Now the realization that we are many and not one, that the
quality of our Being is characterized by multiplicity instead of unity,
belongs to a stage in the journey called "awakening from sleep" which
can end in a man being born again—that is, finding and becoming
Real 'I'. What then undertakes this journey? Those 'I's in a man
which have the most understanding. We come, then, to the idea that
our different 'I's are not on the same level. Some 'I's are very small
in understanding—very mean, very poor, envious and stupid. Some
'I's are bigger, and so on. When a man begins to hear the Work with
both ears, and to observe himself in accordance with its instructions,
there gather around Observing 'I' all 'I's who wish to understand more.
This collection of 'I's is on a higher level than the 'I's that deal with
1073
everyday life and its affairs. This collection of 'I's that form round
Observing 'I' is called Deputy-Steward and if they are strong enough
to persist and fight against all these negative and disbelieving 'I's that
attack them a further stage is reached called "Steward". This is the
herald of Real 'I'. So we can put them in this way: Observing 'I',
Deputy-Steward, Steward, Real 'I', in order of ascent.
I said last time that one should try to observe and study the history
of different 'I's in ourselves. Some people undertake to write their
biographies. But in their autobiographies they always take themselves
as one 'I', moving through Time. They should write instead the history
of different 'I's in them. Now our most mechanical 'I's live in small
parts of centres—in the basement of oneself. They are usually quite
unintelligent and have no understanding. They belong to the lowest
level of our Being. They take charge of us most of the day, speak
through our mouths and call themselves 'I'. They are rigid, always
saying the same things in the same way. Towards the end of life it is
often noticeable how the better and more understanding 'I's in a person
get disconnected and there remain only the most petty and tiresome
'I's. This is impossible to understand unless we realize that a person is
not one 'I', but many 'I's, and that these 'I's are on different levels,
as on the wires on a telegraph-pole. In this Work one should aim not
to go always in company with negative, weak, vain, poor 'I's, for they
spoil everything, and produce bad, inner states. It is a common thing
that while we have no power of making ourselves happy we have considerable powers of separating from unhappy states once we begin to
understand what self-observation and non-identifying mean. But all
this belongs to awakening from sleep so perhaps it is not so curious in
view of that goal.
Great Amwell House, October 11, 1947
THE WORK-OCTAVE
I
The first note Do of the Work-Octave was once defined as "Evaluation of the Work-Ideas". Since the Work-Octave is an ascending octave,
the next note is Re. This was defined as "The Application of the WorkIdeas to oneself". The third note Mi was defined as "The Realization
of Personal Difficulties." Now the next note Fa lies beyond the "place
of Missing Semi-tone". This means, psychologically, that a special
shock has to be given here to reach the stage of understanding represented by the note Fa. In this connection it was said previously that
Do must sound strongly enough, to begin with. That is, the "Evaluation
1074
of the Work" must be great enough to give sufficient strength for anyone
to pass the note Mi and reach the note Fa, apart from other things.
It is obvious that if a person lightly esteems the Work, or cannot understand anything about it, or thinks in his secret, internal side that it is
nonsense, and so on, then he will not value it. So he will not apply it
to himself or be able to pass to any degree of self-realization by its
means or sustain anything coming from it adverse to his self-esteem.
We will speak later about the third note Mi—defined as "The
Realization of Personal Difficulties". Now between this note Mi and
the note Re beneath it, defined as the "Application of the Work-Ideas
to oneself", lie all the processes of connecting the Work with what one
observes. If we connect the Work with what we observe, then things
become arranged in right order in us. (This must be understood. The
Work, not Life, sets things in right order.) As we are mechanically,
things are in wrong order. Unimportant things are made important,
and important things are made unimportant. On one occasion Man
was compared by G. to a three-roomed flat in which wrong articles of
furniture were mixed up with right ones in every room. Since in life
we live by false values and endless lies, this is inevitable. One definition
of truth is right order. That is, when things are arranged in their right
order, there is truth. The body is built up and integrated in this way—
the more important parts being served by the less important, the brain
itself being the highest and so the most carefully nourished and protected and served by all other organs. So in the Work, the Law of the
Octave is sometimes called the Law of Order of Manifestation. It is
evident to you that things can be connected in right or in wrong order.
If in right order, there is truth: if in wrong order, there is something
false. What is a lie, but things in wrong order? It is interesting to
reflect on this aspect of the Law of the Octave (or the Law of 7—both
terms being used). In the Work-Octave it will be seen that unless Do
sounds first strongly enough, Re will never be reached. Without Do,
Re cannot sound, and without Re, Mi cannot sound. One note depends
on another. No note can possibly exist by itself. So unless at Do there
is some real evaluation that increases, the further notes will sound
weakly and everything will die out. But all three notes can strengthen
each other, once they start sounding, through the practical verification
of the Work, whereby we internally see its value more and more. When
this is the case, the gap between Mi-Fa may begin to be bridged and
the note Fa begin to sound. This note Fa is always a new thing in one
—as if another being with a new understanding had begun to grow in
one's being.
*
*
*
1075
THE NOTE FA
In every aspect of life, whatever people may study for their living,
it is difficult and rare to reach the note Fa. A pianist may get as
far as Do-Re, or even to Mi—but rarely further. The note Fa is not
struck. That means simply that the pianist is a Do-Re-Mi man and so
nothing is unique; nothing, save perhaps technique, is exceptional in
his playing. The same applies to every branch of life. In whatever
branch of life you are, to strike Fa means at once that you arc at a far
higher level than others are. The reason is that the person has made
some curiously indefinable individual effort that lifts him beyond this
gap, this missing semi-tone, and establishes him at the note Fa. No
teacher can do this for the person. It is, as I say, a curiously indefinable
effort that only the man from his deepest sense of himself can make.
Imitation will never do it, for that only increases Personality. In brief,
in some way Essence is touched, which can in turn touch Real 'I' and
then the man is whatever he does, or whatever he does is the man.
Of course, if a man has, in a previous recurrence, learned something
that Essence can remember, then Essence will remember earlier, in his
next recurrence—a fact that explains many curious things about those
to whom by common consent genius is attributed. In such a case, the
note Fa will be struck early, and the notes Do, Re, Mi passed quickly.
It is surely obvious to even the most formatory material mind that it is
impossible to explain the lives of some people in terms of one life. I
have often thought this is clearest in the case of some musicians.
*
*
*
Let us return to the note Mi in the Work-Octave defined as the
"Realization of Personal Difficulties". At this stage of the Work,
represented by Mi, one's consciousness has increased to the point of
one's becoming more aware of the kind of person one is. Now the
realization of personal difficulties must not merely depress one or make
one negative. To take Mi in that way is not connecting the Work with
what one observes. To realize as a fact that one is not the perfect man
or woman that one imagined hitherto, belongs to the necessary action
of the Work which is to increase consciousness. The Work says: "Find
out facts about yourself by self-observation." An increase of consciousness reveals what you are. You realize, for example, after some years,
that you are not one, but many different contradictory 'I's, all with
different desires. In that case, you have begun to escape from the
hypnotism of one form of imagination and so have become more conscious.
A man or woman, hypnotized by life, full of illusions and self-satisfactory phantasies, is not conscious. Remember also that self-observation is to let a ray of light into the inner darkness of yourself. Yes, you
yourself. To realize one's personal difficulties is a state comparable with
the Driver awakening from his drunken sleep in the inn and going out
1076
and seeing the wretched state of his horse and carriage. If, at such a
stage, taking my own case, I can think from the Driver and not from Nicoll
I may have a chance of hearing Fa beginning to sound in me. This is
a new feeling of myself—not the feeling of Nicoll. The Driver can understand the Work, while Nicoll cannot. I refer to my own case. It was
once explained to you that positive ideas are necessary to lift a man
from Mi to Fa. The first requisite for Positive Ideas is the belief in
"Greater Mind"—or the Ray of Creation. The ideas of this Work are
Positive Ideas. In life we can notice the increase of negative ideas
accompanied by the increase of negative views and negative emotions.
Now all these 'I's that wish to work are present at the note Mi as well
as the consciousness of one's personal difficulties. You will see clearly
that this stage represented by the note Mi cannot be reached if a man
takes himself as one. The 'I's that wish to work are not the personal
difficulties, for example. They must be seen as quite distinct from 'I's
that, say, do not wish to work. The 'I's that wish to work wish to go
up to Fa. All this means that a man must see and tolerate his multiplicity. Where one was narrow and contracted to the illusion of oneness one is now an expanse of many people where choice is possible.
In other words, the inner state as regards the Work, represented by the
note Mi, is a very wide one, due to a broadening of consciousness. It is
like looking over a wide garden and seeing what is useless and what is
useful. What are you going to select? Which 'I's will you go with?
Remember you can do nothing unless you choose the right 'I' to go with.
If you go with 'I's that drag you down, you will be dragged down.
And again, if you have no idea of inner separation—of separating from
uncomfortable, vain or deceitful or bad 'I's—if, in short, you say 'I'
to everything taking place in you—then you cannot sound Mi—and so
you cannot grow. Your level of Being will remain where it is and you
will attract the same fife as before.
Some people cannot reach the note Mi because they do not observe
themselves over a sufficient period. I quote from a recent letter: "If
one observes oneself over the period of a week, it is possible to discover
what one's personal difficulties are, because during the space of a week
they are bound to recur. One may go through a day without noticing
them, but one cannot get through a week without coming up against
them, even if one goes away into different surroundings. I have noticed
three things that make me lose force. (I also noticed several ways of
getting force.) The same three things may not all recur next week, but
probably one of them will, or two, or perhaps even all three. And they
are the same things that have always spoilt one's life."
When a man, a woman, reach sufficiently the stage of understanding
of the Work called the note Mi, through a strengthening of the notes
Do and Re, then they are close to receiving help from the Work. If
they will be passive to their faults and difficulties, acknowledge them
and separate from them, then, as was said, the note Fa may begin to
sound in them. But, as was said, this note is an utterly different feeling.
1077
It is something delicate and new. Yet this is the beginning of meeting
Real 'I' which is nothing like what they thought was Real 'I'. It is
possible to say that some may not accept this new feeling of what they
are.
Great Amwell House, October 25, 1947
THE WORK-OCTAVE
II
We are taught that an ascending octave starts with Passive Do. The
Work-Octave does not start with work but with valuation. It does not,
for instance, start with thinking one can do and all the consequences
that arise from that illusion. To think one can do—to think, for
example, that one can easily change one's Being and become different
and behave differently if one wants to—is to think from Active Do.
What does it mean to start from Passive Do? Some people think they
can do anything by force. They think perhaps that they can compel
people to believe in God by violent measures and through fear of consequences. This is starting from Active Do. It is starting from the wrong
attitude. To start from Passive Do is an entirely different thing. It is
very interesting to study at different times what it means and how one
continually tries to start from Active Do and continually fails because
one has not begun rightly. As was said, the Work-Octave begins not
with doing but with valuation. Since it is an ascending octave it must
start with Passive Do—for all ascending octaves start from Passive Do.
In this case, then, the valuation of the Work must constitute a Passive
Do.
Now your whole attitude towards a thing you value is quite different
from your attitude towards things you do not value. That is to say, your
psychological state is quite different in each case. You must understand
that a wrong psychological state is just as real in its effects as trying to
open a door with the wrong key. Valuation of the Work is the right
psychological state to begin with. Through valuation a thing becomes
precious to you. Through valuation you care for and remember a
thing. Through valuation you have patience to find out more about it.
Through valuation, if it is great, you regard yourself as of secondary
importance in comparison to what you value because what you value
is greater than you. The Work is greater than oneself and so the
approach to it is through valuation. There are many parables about
valuation such as the parable of the merchant who sought "goodly
pearls, and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all
that he had, and bought it," and the parable of the man who found
1078
treasure hidden in a field, "and to his joy he goeth and selleth all that
he hath, and buyeth that field." You can understand from them what
valuation means and so what starting from Passive Do means. The
Work says that a man must believe in Greater Mind. To me it was
evident at an early stage that this Work, this system that we study every
day, came from a mind far above ordinary mind, and one that was
possessed of a knowledge beyond human knowledge. So when we were
told that it was useless doing this Work unless one believed in the
existence of Greater Mind, no difficulties arose in me, because I had
already come to the conclusion that the system came from Greater
Mind—that is, from Conscious Humanity. Now if a man feels he knows
better than the Work, he cannot do the Work, because he cannot sound
the Note Do. To start from the Note Re, which is the application of
the Work to oneself, to make Re into Do, is impossible. I mean, it will
lead nowhere. The man is starting from the wrong place in himself.
He is putting the valuation of himself before everything else. He thinks
he knows and he thinks he can do. He does not see that he knows
nothing or that such knowledge as he has contradicts itself, nor does
he see that he always does the same things over and over again. That
is, he does not realize that his "doing" is simply the result of mechanicalness. He imagines he is fully conscious, has Will, can do, and so on.
You have heard sufficiently often how all these illusions have to be
broken. How? By a man slowly seeing for himself that they are illusions
and that hitherto he has been sitting in a public house drunk with
dreams about himself. This is called beginning to awaken from sleep
and there is a strange harsh taste connected with it, quite unlike any
of the tastes of life.
Now if a person does not value, and ascribes everything to himself,
his work will lead nowhere, because, as I said, the man is starting from
the wrong place in himself. He is starting from False Personality. You
will remember that what is done from Personality is done through the
force of external circumstances. External circumstances make you act.
You are not free. That is, you cannot do. External circumstances acting
on your machine cause it to react. This is not doing in the Work-sense.
The machine does, not you. In fact, there is no You—that is, no Real 'I'.
What you call 'I' is nothing but a changing collection of 'I's in the
Personality acted on at the moment by external circumstances. To
begin to do, one must stop the reactions of certain 'I's—that is, not do.
All you can do is to remember yourself.
To continue—if there is little or no valuation of the Work, it cannot
begin in the right place. It is a practical question, like sowing seed in
the right place. Of course, valuation increases as Re and Mi sound
stronger. But if you have possessed Magnetic Centre the Note Do will
sound early and clearly. Things will get cold, however, unless you
constantly return in your mind to the Work and relate it each day to
your self-observation and to all you remember and to what you want.
For what you want will gradually get more and more distinct.
1079
Now to turn to the Note Re—at Re you have to learn all the Work
teaches, to learn the language of the Work, and to apply it to yourself.
This takes a long time—in fact, one's life. Application begins with selfobservation—and you will not keep conscious of yourself in this respect
unless your valuation is strong enough to supply you with the necessary
emotional force to make effort every day from your understanding.
We all need to work. But do not criticize another's way of working.
If you must criticize, begin with yourself. It is not merely that people
have to learn the language of the Work: they have to learn the meaning.
It is not the words, but the meaning. And you can only learn meaning
by seeing the truth of it for yourself—because interiorly we are all open
to truth, while exteriorly we are all open to lies—that is, to life.
Now let us touch the Note Mi for a moment. Here you realize, on
a wider and wider scale, the city of yourself, of which you took yourself
as the sole inhabitant, and the Note Fa becomes possible—not in all
probability as you may have conceived. And it is here that you learn
to speak and understand the language of the Work. Here, for instance,
you know you cannot do, and here you know that others cannot do,
and so you do not speak always as if you or others could do. This already
is a great difference in you. And because you know and understand
yourself better and have lost many conceits, you know and understand
others, and cease to judge them. It is when you have reached this stage
that the Work itself may begin to speak to you internally, because you
have learned something of the language in which it speaks. This is why
the Note Fa becomes possible.
Great Amwell House, November 1, 1947
THE WORK-OCTAVE
III
For right valuation the Work must become emotional. A man, a
woman, should begin to see for themselves the truth of the Work. Why?
Because otherwise it cannot become emotional. That is, it cannot touch
the Emotional Centre. If it does not, it merely remains in the external
memory of the formatory part of the Intellectual Centre. It is a
detached memory, not affecting one's life. It is a memory comparable,
say, to remembering the dates of battles in history. It is not yet a part
of oneself. Now it is sometimes said that one of the supreme objects
of the Work is to awaken the Emotional Centre. What can it mean to
awaken the Emotional Centre? As we are, the Emotional Centre is in
a very bad state. It is "impure". Let us speak of this impurity. No
one who has begun to sound the Note Re of the Work in his or her life
1080
—that is, to apply sincerely the ideas of the Work to themselves through
self-observation—can possibly deny the great power of negative
emotions. The Emotional Centre is impure, first of all, from the
terrible mass of negative emotions that govern us and all mankind.
I remind you again of what the Work says—that it is not desires of
sex or of power that govern the world, but negative emotions. And
this applies to each of us. We are taught that the Emotional Centre is
born in us free of a negative part. But since we are born amongst
sleeping people, all deeply under the power of negative emotions, we
acquire in a short time a negative part of the Emotional Centre, which
increases more and more. This, then, is one of the impurities affecting
this centre, which if it begins to work aright marvellously supplies us
with what we lack and gives an inner source of force that I cannot
explain to you in any words. As it is, we have a marvellous inner source
of negative emotions and general unhappiness. So work—real, practical
and hard work—against negative emotions, by non-identifying with
them, not consenting to them, not going with them, not believing them,
separating the feeling of 'I' from them—is necessary.
Now it is impossible to pass from the Note Mi to the Note Fa in the
Work-Octave if one believes in one's negative emotions. Only the
realization of the truth of the Work can make it possible to pass from
Mi to Fa—that is, for help to be given you to do so. You have to see
by self-study that negative emotions always lie and pervert the truth.
They take everything as they wish to take things. Negative emotions
distort everything. They malform, they twist, they deny, they hate—
for at bottom all negative emotions lead down to hate and violence and
so also to fear. Hate, violence and fear form a typical triad of forces
and each one depends on the others.
As a result of this distortion that negative emotions produce in
oneself, several forms of lying result. And again it is necessary to understand that no one can pass from the Note Mi to the Note Fa unless they
know all about how they lie and have observed lying in themselves.
There are many forms of lying that the Work speaks of. One that is
comparatively harmless is writing or telling something that happens in
a way that puts you in a good light. But there are some very evil
forms of lying that spring from deep-seated negative states that are not
acknowledged and are surrounded by clouds of self-justifying. If they
are not acknowledged the person concerned can only sound a very
poor Mi. He does not know himself and, as is often the case, absolutely
refuses to broaden the consciousness of himself to include his lying.
Sometimes this is due to some extraordinary self-satisfactory picture of
himself being just and honourable and all the rest of it that prevents
him from this necessary increase of consciousness, only gained at the
cost of his vanity. Remember in this connection that every time we say
'I' we are really lying. Which 'I'? We all for a long time say 'I' with
such emphasis and confidence, as if Real 'I' controlled all we do and
say and think and feel. But if we sound eventually a broad Mi, such
1081
illusions are no longer powerful. We have, in short, to come to accept,
to endure, what we are, which is the only way to accept and endure
others in the Work.
To return to the question of the impurity of Emotional Centre—
there is another impurity which is best illustrated by what Mr.
Ouspensky wrote about it in "Tertium Organum". I will make
the following quotations and then leave the matter for discussion,
emphasizing the observation: "It is impossible to know through impure
emotions."
Mr. Ouspensky wrote: "Impure emotion gives obscure, not pure
knowledge, just as impure glass gives a confused image. Pure emotion
gives a clear, pure image of that for the knowledge of which it is
intended. This is the only possible decision of the question. The arrival
at this conclusion saves us from the common mistake of moralists who
divide arbitrarily all emotion into "moral" and "immoral." But if we
try for a moment to separate emotions from their usual moral frames,
then we see that matters are considerably simpler, that there are no
in their nature pure emotions, nor impure in their nature, but that each
emotion will be pure or impure according to whether or not there are
admixtures of other emotions in it. There can be a pure sensuality,
the sensuality of the "Song of Songs" which initiates into the sensation
of cosmic life and gives the power to hear the beating pulse of nature.
And there can be impure sensuality, mixed with other emotions good
or bad from a moral standpoint but equally making muddy the fundamental feeling. There can be pure sympathy, and there can be
sympathy mixed with calculation to receive something for one's
sympathy. There can be pure love of knowledge, a thirst for knowledge
for its own sake, and there can be an inclination to knowledge wherein
consideration of utility or profit assume the chief importance.
"In their outer manifestation pure and impure emotions may differ
very little. Two men may be playing chess, acting outwardly very
similarly, but in one will burn self-love, desire of victory, and he will
be full of different unpleasant feelings towards his rival—fear, envy of
a clever move, spite, jealousy, animosity, or schemes to win, while the
other will simply solve a complex mathematical problem which lies
before him, not thinking about his rival at all. The emotion of the first
man will be impure, if only because it contains much of the mixed. The
emotion of the second will be pure. The meaning of this is of course
perfectly clear.
"Examples of a similar division of outwardly similar emotions may
be constantly seen in the aesthetic, literary, scientific, public, and even
the spiritual and religious activities of men. In all regions of this activity
only complete victory over the pseudo-personal elements leads a man
to the correct understanding of the world and of himself. All emotions
coloured by such self-elements are like concave, convex, or otherwise
curved glasses which reflect rays incorrectly and distort the image of
the world.
1082
"Therefore the problem of emotional knowledge consists in a
corresponding preparation of the emotions which serve as organs of
knowledge. 'Become as little children . . .' and 'Blessed are the pure
in heart . . .' In these evangelical words is expressed first of all the
idea of the purification of the emotions. It is impossible to know
through impure emotions. Therefore in the interests of a correct understanding of the world and of the self, man should undertake the
purification and the elevation of his emotions."
Great Amwell House, November 8, 1947
PERSONALITY AND ESSENCE
or
OUTER AND INNER MAN
or (in my case)
NICOLL AND 'I'
When you act from the Work-teaching—as, for example, you do not
speak scandal when you might—then you act beyond the pleasureprinciple. If you do only what gives you pleasure, you do not work on
yourself. Only then the question arises—what gives you essential
pleasure and what forms of pleasure are due to False Personality? You
all know by now that the man who acts always from a desire to produce
a good impression, to add to reputation, to be well-thought of, acts
only from his outer side—that is, his false, world-turned side. Inner
goodwill he has none. He does nothing from his interior side. So he
is acting his "goodness". The central attack of Christ was on the
Pharisees—that is, you and me—not people who lived 2,000 years ago.
As has been so often said, the Pharisee in you is the False Personality
that does everything for the sake of every subtle form of self-glory—
even to fasting and praying all day, like the hypocrites mentioned in
the Gospels who "love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the
corners of the streets." (The word "hypocrite" comes from the Greek
νττοκρΐτήs, which means an actor on the stage.) Yes, this is the tragedy
of so many people who regard themselves as devout and so on. They
are not so, interiorly, in the inner man, the inner woman. If all outer
social restraints were removed they would neither fast nor pray. That
is, everything they do is impure. This is well illustrated in the parable
of the people who prayed. This parable was spoken "unto certain
which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and set all others
at nought."
"Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee,
and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus
1083
with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as the rest of men,
extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast
twice
in the week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the publican,
standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven,
but smote his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner."
(Luke XVIII 10-13.)
You have heard all this before. Very well—but have you observed
it in yourself? For this Work starts from self-observation—a long journey.
That is, it is internal—its direction is inwards: its result lies only in
self-revelation, in seeing and acknowledging what is not really you, not
this imagined you—and ending up with the reaching of that inner goal
that all esoteric teaching speaks of and which Christ calls "the Kingdom
of Heaven, which is within you." He adds, of course, that you have to
be re-born, before this is possible. The Work says: "Personality must
become passive before any inner development can take place." Yes—
and do you see it is the same idea? At present, say, in me, Dr. Nicoll
is active. And in you, if your name is Smith, Mr. Smith is active.
Now, in my case, Dr. Nicoll, and, in Smith's case, Mr. Smith is the
Personality and especially the False Personality to which he attaches
such value and so is so hurt and offended by life. I will once more
remind you that we are born with Essence which is pure but not
developed. Then, born in a world of sleeping people who tell lies,
Essence stops growing (it can only grow through truth) and becomes
surrounded by acquired Personality, typical local attitudes, etc., by
imitated things, not real things, not internally-seen truth. So a man
becomes a disharmony. Why? Because his truth is all wrong—his
taking of himself is all wrong—his very feeling of 'I' is all wrong. He
has lost his inner relation to himself and developed a. false realness. This
is False Personality. We are all in this False Realness and all feel lost
and wish to return. We are nostalgic. Yes—but where, to what, do
we wish to return? Perhaps you know, or imagine you know: perhaps
you have never had this feeling which goes inwards rightly and have
taken it outwards as dislike of everyone and everything, and discontent,
and all the rest of the feelings of not being properly treated. Yes—then
indeed you are in disharmony—that is, you are taking everything
wrongly, including even your darling self.
Now this return—this place we deeply, nostalgically wish for—is not
possible to realize unless a man, a woman, knows something as to what
it is necessary to do about it. Instructions are scattered about in the
Gospels, not in the right order. On this point the Work teaches us that
a man must first awaken before he can die and that he must die if he
•wishes to be re-born. Our work here is about awakening. A man must
awaken to the multiplicity of his being, to his negative emotions, to his
internal considering, to his continual identifying with everything. He
must awaken to the different 'I's in him that always speak in his name.
He must awaken to his inner contradictions—in fact, he must reach
the note Mi in the Work-Octave called "realization of personal diffi1084
culties". All this is necessary before a man can "die", because otherwise he does not know what to die to and may even attempt to die to
the wrong things. In this connection, you will remember how sometimes
the Work speaks of going against one's mechanicalness. You must understand that if we seek to live more consciously we cannot simply live
mechanically all day long, if we are doing this Work. You know how
the Work speaks of people being asleep and yet imagining all the time
that they are fully conscious of all they do. One therefore has to realize
the fact that one is not properly conscious—or, as the Gospels say—
awake—a painful matter. So it can be said that the study of this Work
enables one better to understand the Gospels in this inner sense. So
this Work is called Esoteric Christianity. "Esoteric" simply means
inner and "exoteric" means outer. A parable has, for example, an inner
meaning. The widow's cruse and the oil do not mean an actual cruse
and oil. In order to start on the inner journey so that one returns,
inner meaning is required, and so self-observation is necessary. One
must see False Personality and see it again and again and again for
days, months and years—until one begins to separate from it interiorly
and no longer says 'I' to it, no longer takes it as 'I', and no longer puts
all one's psychic force into it. And all this time you will be hurt and
hit—if you are in the right atmosphere. Then at last False Personality
is passive. This new state is the beginning of that journey of which we
speak.
Great Amwell House, November 15, 1947
ON HEARING THE WORK
On one occasion G. said of someone: "He cannot hear". On
another occasion he said: "He is always out". In this commentary I
will speak first of hearing. Of course, literally, to say that a person
cannot hear means that he is deaf. But G. did not mean a physical
incapacity of the ears because the man could hear as well as anyone
else. He meant that the man could not hear psychologically. Everyone
who has been in the Work for some time must have had experiences of
hearing something for the first time which had been often said before.
Now why cannot we hear psychologically something said the first time?
The answer is: Because of our level of understanding, which depends on
our level of Being. To hear in the sense G. used the word is to perceive
the meaning of what is said. But our perception of meaning depends
on our level of understanding and this depends on a certain ratio between
our level of Being and our level of Knowledge. Our general level is
characterized by the state of sleep. Being asleep, we cannot hear.
When we begin to awaken from sleep we hear better. Some, having
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heard a little better, prefer to go to sleep again and either no amount of
shaking will make them awaken, or they wake up for a time again and
then sleep. This process is like going up and down on a ladder and
happens to us all. Now you are more awake and hear better: then you
are more asleep and hear nothing. It is necessary to be patient with
oneself. The Work is stronger than life, and if we had sufficient reception of the Work—that is, if we heard its meaning fully enough—then
we would perceive for ourselves that the Work is stronger than life and
its sleep. But our power of reception of the Work is small and so life
and sleep seem more powerful and overcome us continually. This is
not because life and sleep are stronger than the Work: the reason is
that our capacity to receive the esoteric teaching of the Work is small.
Is it not extraordinary that sometimes people do not understand even
this, and, as it were, blame the Work? Now to hear means to receive,
to take in. A man therefore who cannot "hear" is a man who cannot
take in, cannot receive the ideas of the Work. He has no bowl, no cup,
no containing vessel. He is convex. There is in him no room for
anything save himself. It is said in one ancient fragment of esoteric
teaching that a man secretly is a cup upside down and that it is
required of him to turn this cup upwards so that it can receive something and hold it and so retain it. We must all admit that even when
we have "heard" something—that is, received some small new vision
of things—we find it difficult to hold it, and so to retain it, so quickly
does the cup turn down again to the power of life and sleep. This is
when the real struggle of Work and Life comes in—namely, the fight
between psychological and physical meaning, between what the Work
stands for and what Life stands for. This is where all real temptation
begins. Notice the allegory about the temptation of Christ. He was
asked by the Devil—that is, Life—to turn the cup downwards and so
worship the power of external life and all its spectacle and glory and
power:
"And he (the devil) led him up, and shewed him all the
kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said
unto him, To thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of
them: for it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I
will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall all
be thine."
{Luke IV 5-7.)
To return to "hearing": a man cannot hear the meaning of the
Work if he is full of himself because in that case he has no "cup"—that
is, nothing in him to receive the teaching of the Work. He is already
in need of nothing. With the complex inner arrangements of selfestimation, buffers, attitudes, pictures, self-justifications, vanity, pride,
and all the rest of it, there is absolutely no room for anything to enter.
So the Work starts with self-observation, uncritical and sincere. Why?
In order to make room for something else. For when a man through
self-observation realizes something of his true condition—when, for
instance, he begins, even slightly, to realize he is mechanical and not a
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man, he loses something of his hitherto untouched self-sufficiency. This
at once makes room. Yes, makes room in the inn. For in the parable of
the Birth of Christ, there was no room in the inn—which means that
esoteric teaching, given as it has been through the ages, has always
found "no room in the inn"—the inn being something in a man very
close to the highroad, yet a little apart, that might receive strangers.
The ideas of the Work are exactly strangers—strange to one's ordinary
thoughts and ideas. Now it is only through Work self-observation, over
a long time, that room can be made in a man, a woman, for the
knowledge of the Work to enter and begin its gradual, successive, not
noticed transformations of Being. Then a man begins to hear, who
hitherto, with the cup downwards, has been deaf and so "heard"
nothing beyond life and sleep.
*
*
*
Now let us speak of the man, the woman, who is "never at home"
or "always out". This refers to those who have no centre of gravity
in themselves. They live, as it were, outside themselves, and indeed this
is not surprising because they have no home, or only a haunted home.
It is impossible, therefore, to have any kind of serious conversation with
them, for a man must be at home before you can talk to him. They will
not meet themselves, but avoid themselves, as if they were afraid to
look, and they hurry away both in their minds and in their speech from
anything that might involve themselves. If you ask them a question
about themselves they escape from it and you can see them as in a
vision fleeing away across the plain to some distant crag or forest to
conceal themselves. Or they answer in some agitated or strained way.
In fact, it is possible to give many other descriptions of the person G.
describes as "never-at-home", and so it is, for us, a matter for observation and self-observation. Fear, of course, and therefore tension, must
play a strong part—but what kind of fear? This again is for observation
and self-observation. But I have given you two examples of the way
in which G. formulates a person. I was always interested in his simple
way of expressing things in people's psychology. He said that the
practice of relaxation was necessary for a person "always out".
Why did he say that the practice of relaxation was necessary for a
person whom he described as "always out"? I should say that one
reason lies in the fact that a person without a centre of gravity, a person
who is not there, never there, always out, is strained in his muscles, and
so the practice of relaxing his muscles puts him—or her—more into
themselves. This is an example of starting from Moving Centre, in
order to control Emotional Centre. Apart from this G. always said that
there were two supreme things in the Work-discipline—to remember oneself and to relax. The practice of relaxing, he taught us, begins with
inner attention, so that Consciousness can be placed in each part of
the Body. He said: "Begin with the small muscles of the face." I will
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add that both G. and O. taught us to remember ourselves for only
a very short time at a time, and, as far as I remember, G. indicated
that relaxation must only be for a short time at first. This must be
right, because placing the internal attention into different parts of the
Body requires force which is soon easily exhausted.
Great Amwell House, November 29, 1947
CENTRE OF GRAVITY
SUN, MOON,
AND
STARS
A question was asked at one of the Groups recently: "What is Centre
of Gravity? How to define it?"
*
*
*
It is necessary to review the different senses in which this term is
used in the Work. As in everything in the Work we have to distinguish
between a mechanical Centre of Gravity and a conscious Centre of Gravity
in oneself.
(1) Life as Centre of Gravity. Here come in the categories of Man—
Man No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. In the case of Man No. 1, Man No. 2,
Man No. 3, "centre of gravity" is used to signify the centre chiefly used
in the approach to life. That is, in the case of Man No. 1, his life-centre
of gravity is either in Moving Centre or in Instinctive Centre. Man
No. 2 approaches everything emotionally to begin with—that is, by likingdisliking, and so his life-centre of gravity is in Emotional Centre.
Similarly, Man No. 3 approaches everything theoretically, intellectually,
so his life-centre of gravity is in Intellectual Centre. These are the lifecentres of gravity of mechanical mankind and by reason of these differences
Man cannot agree with Man. This is therefore called in the Work:
"The Circle of Confusion of Tongues" or "The Circle of Babel" or
simply "Life". By contrast the Conscious Circle of Humanity—No. 5,
6 and 7—understand one another.
(2) The next meaning of Centre of Gravity is used in connection
with work. The passage from the mechanical to the Conscious Circle
of Humanity is impossible without the help of something different from
Life and its daily stresses and strains. So the Work is called a different
3rd Force from Life. Let us speak of this second meaning of Centre
of Gravity which must begin with "Point in the Work"—that is, a
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genuine feeling that the Work is important. A point in the Work begins
with evaluation.
*
*
*
The gravitational force of the Moon is strong enough to affect the
movement of tides, etc., on the Earth. Now the Work teaches that, as
we are, the "Moon" acts psychologically on us. The external Universe,
represented physically by visible Sun, Moon, Stars, etc., is also within
us—not physically, but psychologically. So the Work, speaking psychologically, says: "We have to make Moon in ourselves." Man is a
microcosmos—but not fully—living in a macrocosmos. The physical,
visible Man and the physical, visible Universe are represented also on
another scale—that is, a psychological scale—not complete in Man.
The Moon, physically, literally, is lower than the Earth; the Sun is
higher; the Galaxy is higher, and so on. But this external symbol of
the seen Universe is, the Work says, in us psychologically. That is,
when it is said that Essence comes from the stars, it means, psychologically, that Essence comes from a high level. Can you grasp that the
external, visible represents the internal invisible? As within—so without.
Yes—but do you see? There are scales in the visible Universe—and
scales in yourself, corresponding. If you had solar Consciousness then
you would be at the divine level of the Sun—represented outwardly,
visibly, in the scalar structure of the outer world as the literal, physical
Sun—but not the inner psychological Sun only present and contacted
within, through inner Consciousness. I speak here of Higher Centres.
People all through the ages have worshipped the external, physical Sun.
Here the difficulty arises of separation of literal and psychological, of
material and spiritual, of outer and inner—a difficulty which for all who
persist in holding to the Work will finally cease and a marvellous inner
world of experience open up. Man is born in the vast Universe composed of myriads of Moons, Suns, and Galaxies. He is inevitably stamped
by it, as by his Mother. But it is represented in him as a ladder. In the
Ray of Creation, which is a ladder, is shewn how one traces down, from
all other possible Rays, our Ray, our Sun, our Planets, our Earth, our
Moon. An enormous machinery is apparent. But, abstracting from
the physical representation, the Universe is partly in Man, as well as
outside him. So the Work speaks of our Moon psychologically, as a
powerful influence in us, the influence of forming intractable habits.
"The action of the Moon," Gurdjieff said, in so many words, "is
like a weight. It controls Organic Life, which covers the surface of the
Earth as a sensitive film. It is like a weight on a pendulum. Its influence
is to keep everything where and as it is. It uses Organic Life as its food.
From this point of view life on Earth is a pain-factory." Early in the
Work, Mr. Ouspensky said to us: "It is necessary to make Moon in
oneself. Try to see what is meant." What can this mean? It means
that we must make something in ourselves that will resist the influences
of life. Some ancient writers called this escaping from prison. As
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machines we are driven by outside life. We are functions of life. We
react to everything as machines do. First we have to see this is so
genuinely, not extravagantly. The gradual realization of this mechanicalness of oneself is the beginning of awakening. Remember only you
can awake to yourself. I cannot awaken you. If we could change our
responses to daily impressions, if we could resist the customary effects
of daily life upon us, we would be creating "Moon in ourselves". We
have, therefore, as it is taught, to isolate ourselves from the effects of life
on us—not from life. If we do not, if we live mechanically—and by now
some should really know what is meant by that and understand that
one can sit in a chair doing nothing and yet think and feel mechanically
—if, I said, we live mechanically, then "Moon eats us". It takes all
our energy, especially when we are negative. Notice it is your way of
taking life you have to work against. That requires long self-observation.
Now you have often heard that each act of non-identification saves
energy. It is anti-mechanical. And if it is accompanied by SelfRemembering it actually creates a higher kind of energy and so an
increase of Consciousness. Now there are three main things which help
to isolate us from the personal effects of life upon oneself—Self-Remembering, Non-Identifying, and Non-Considering. All this creates "Moon
in oneself". Going against habits does the same—but it is best to begin
with psychological habits, such as the habit of being negative, the habit
of being asleep, the habit of making inner accounts, the habit of hating,
the habit of being sorry for oneself, and so on, for, of course, the more
you hate, the more you feel sorry for yourself.
The Work says that Man on Earth is under many influences. The
Earth is under 48 orders of laws—that is, influences playing on you like
shifting spotlights. It also says that the Moon is under 96 orders of laws.
To be under the Moon is to be under the greatest possible mechanicalness and, as you know, this is the case in a man, a woman, who is fast
asleep, governed by every form of negative emotion, hate, internal
considering, and so on. By work on oneself one can come under fewer
and better influences or laws. This is why we work on the lines laid
down in the practical teaching of the Work. As a result of obeying them
one rises in the "Ladder of Being" represented by the Ray of Creation.
But this rising is only possible through sacrifice. To behave as you
always do, and expect to rise, is impossible. One must, to begin with,
sacrifice one's suffering. All self-pity, all self-cradling, vanity, secret,
absurd fears, all self-sentimentality, all inner accounting, all pitiful
pictures, all sighs, inner groans, and complaints, must be burned up in
the fire of increasing Consciousness. Remember there is no justice under
higher laws such as we understand justice. Higher justice, heavenly
justice, is to work on yourself so that when you die you have no accounts.
The question only is then—in spite of all these difficulties you may
mention: "What have you done beyond yourself?" So it is said elsewhere: "Ye shall be judged every man, every woman, according to
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your work." I would add: "What situations have you transformed?"
Yes, this is worth-while reflecting on, and as deeply as you can—-if you
can as yet even reflect at all on this thing that you cling to and so
wrongly take as "yourself" and on what it is doing to you in the way
of unhappiness. Remember what has been so stressed—what you react
mechanically to, what you take impressions on, is not yourself. It is the
machine. It is something that is not you. Can you in the midst of a
negative scene say: "This is not I?" If so, you eventually can relax to
an extent that I simply cannot describe to you. Only non-identifying
gives inner peace. Understand that real experiences in the Work cannot
be described to another who has not reached the level of them. It is
like trying to describe the taste of something lovely that another person
has not tasted and perhaps can never taste.
Now in the supreme sense, when we begin to "make Moon in
ourselves" we are making a Work-Centre of Gravity distinct from life.
Only a third force different from the third force of life can do this for
and in us. Only a psycho-spiritual force can do it, derived not from
life and the dull, heavy, habit-forming mechanizing influences of the
"Moon" but from those more graceful who have gone before, up the
Side-Ladder to the Sun, and left us memorials of the way to follow
them.
This is the first and greatest idea about forming "centre of gravity"
in oneself. Only with this "centre of gravity" can a man reach that level
of being called No. 4 Man—a man in whom all centres begin to work
and who is given the unique insight and revelation to see that things
appropriate to each centre are not contradictory any more than Autumn
is a contradiction to Spring.
Great Amwell House, December 6, 1947
COMMENTARY ON INCREASE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
WORK-IDEA
According to the teaching of this Work we are at the second level
of consciousness, designated the so-called Waking State in which people
hate and kill each other in the name of some theory, etc. The Work
teaches that mankind, being at this level, which is not proper consciousness, suffers in accordance with this state, and is used for other
purposes than are beneficial to it. It says, before anything can become
better, mankind—or a sufficient number of people—must reach the
3rd level. Otherwise no real change in the affairs of mankind can
occur and Man will continue to swing between the opposites, war and
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peace, etc. In short, we here—each one—must undergo an increase in
consciousness. The 3rd level of consciousness—where outside help can
reach us—-is called the level of Self-Remembering, Self Consciousness or
Self-Awareness. We seek to reach this level. Of course, in common fairness, everyone should. Well, start with yourself. Can you wake up a
little? How, then, can we individually, through personal work, undergo
an increase of consciousness?
Now we come to a commentary on this central Work-idea of
becoming more conscious and the consequences of remaining asleep in
the 2nd State.
COMMENTARY
One direction of increasing consciousness is making yourself more
conscious to yourself. We spoke recently of the person who "could not
hear" and of the person who "was always out". As several people found
the comments made on these two definitions given by Gurdjieff useful,
let us speak about the person "who always makes difficulties". On one
occasion Mr. Ouspensky said to me: "You always make difficulties".
I was surprised. I thought at the time that this was really an absurd
thing to say about me. It seemed so obvious to me then that it was O.
who always made difficulties. I never made them. So I was not only
surprised, but offended. Probably, I thought to myself: "What? Can
he really mean that? Can he believe it is true, when for several months
or years I have been carefully pointing out to him how difficult he is,
and what difficulties he makes for me?" Now I take this example in
order to illustrate how, unless one becomes conscious of something in
oneself one cannot see it, cannot understand how it can possibly apply
to oneself and so cannot change it. Is it not clear that if you are not
conscious of some quality in yourself, you are therefore not aware of it
and therefore cannot believe that you possess it, if someone else happens
to point it out to you, and so you cannot change it? Consciousness and
change are inseparable. A person has two things: a physical body and
a psychological body. The knowledge of both is extremely faulty and
erroneous. So people collide daily with one another.
Now let us take only the psychological body—a person's psychology
—your own personal psychology, through which you relate yourself to
another person's psychology. A difficult matter indeed because you are
not aware of your own psychology, nor is the other person aware of
his or her psychology. Both have a thousand and one things in them
that they are unconscious of, that they are not aware of, and yet that
manifest themselves all the time. This is the general state of "Man
asleep". So the Work starts with "self-observation". It says that it is
necessary to "know thyself"—to quote the inscription written over the
portico of the ancient Greek temple of Delphi, where there was an
esoteric school that had clairvoyance and which was acknowledged
throughout the North-Eastern Mediterranean some four thousand
years ago. Yes, before we can start, we must know ourselves much
1092
better than we do in the running stream of life: and out of that
knowledge we must become more responsible to one another and to
ourselves. Otherwise we do not really exist individually.
Some time ago it was asked: "What is psychology?" The answer
was: "Psychology can be said to be what you are not aware of." At
that time we were speaking of the dark side of ourselves—by which is
meant the side of ourselves that we do not see, are not aware of, and
so do not acknowledge. Understand, you can be what you are not
aware of. Yet this side acts all the time—and the tragedy is we do not
see it. We are it, without knowing it, without having become conscious
of it. So the Work says: "Self-observation is necessary. It lets a ray of
light into the inner darkness of ourselves." What is this ray of light?
This ray of light means the light of consciousness, for consciousness is
light, not sunlight, but spiritual light, psychological light. And the inner
darkness means all that side, all those qualities, that we are not
conscious of, not aware of, and do not acknowledge. What is the result?
What happens when—to take the example of myself—I cannot see that
I make difficulties? I do not see it is myself, am not conscious of it,
and so do not acknowledge it. Instead, I see it in another person. I see
only that O. makes difficulties, not me. The fault is in him, not in me.
This is "psychology". To borrow a word from my first psychological
teacher, Dr. Jung—he said: "We project on to others what we cannot
accept in ourselves." Yes—you all know the jealous person who, not
accepting his or her own thoughts of infidelity, projects them and
accuses only the other person. Is this not the simplest example of what
"practical psychology" means—and therefore of the necessity of selfobservation and the gradual accepting of what is in oneself? Unfortunately, it is a very difficult thing to become aware of what we project
on to others, in the way of suspicion, slander, accusation, offendedness,
dislike, hate, and all the rest. There is a machinery of buffers, attitudes,
associations, negative emotions, pictures, considerings, vanities, and
false personality, that is very powerful and serves to keep us asleep in
the grip of mechanical life, from which so few have the courage and
clear thought to awaken at all costs. In other words, we do not see
ourselves without long effort. We remain not conscious of ourselves,
unless we work. We project on to others what we should see in ourselves, if we retain the illusion that we are fully conscious. So the Work
speaks of the necessity of an increase of consciousness, before a man can
change. "Man," it says, "is not yet conscious. He attributes consciousness to himself. He does not realize that he is not yet conscious. A
conscious man knows himself. A mechanical man imagines he does.
Now in regard to projecting into others what we do not see in ourselves,
remember that this Work says: "We are mirrors to one another."
The object of self-observation, then, is to become more conscious of
oneself. The great object of the Work is to lead to a definite and
possible destiny—i.e. a definite change of Being. So I ask you again:
"Can you change anything you are not conscious of?" Obviously, if,
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as Mr. Ouspensky said, I always make difficulties, and if I am not
conscious of it, how can I change it? To this practical point I wish to
call the attention of you all. If a person is not conscious of the fact
that he or she speaks or acts in a certain way, can that person change
it? No—it is quite clear that it is impossible. Now suppose you point out
to the person that he or she speaks or behaves in this particular way—
what will happen? Most likely you will be accused of unfairness. Why?
Because the person concerned has no idea that it is true. The matter
is not conscious to the person's mind. It is unconscious. What is the
only remedy? The only remedy is for the person after long selfobservation to realize personally that he or she speaks or behaves in this
or that way. In that case, an increase of consciousness has taken place
and something has been added to consciousness. Is this person then
the same? No—by seeing, by becoming more conscious, by accepting,
by acknowledgement, the person is no longer the same. This is the way
we follow in this Work. A man who becomes more conscious cannot
remain the same. So it is said that self-observation is a method of selfchange.
Now in regard to the impossibility of altering anything that you are
totally unconscious of—which is obvious—there comes in here the
altering something that you are half-conscious of, but will not acknowledge. This latter situation is due to a buffer. If you try to say anything
about it to another, you will get probably a violent reaction and a great
deal of self-justifying. This is always important and interesting to notice
in oneself. It shews where a buffer lies. A buffer intervenes between
two contradictory things in you, both of which in a way you are aware
of, but not together at the same time.
Let me return to the phrase: "You always make difficulties." For
the moment let us leave myself out. What do you understand by a
person "who always makes difficulties"? Does this in any possible way
apply to yourself? Do you tend to make difficulties and if so, of what
kind? Gardeners and cooks, I have noticed in the past, always seem
to do so. No doubt, when I noticed this, I was bitter about what Mr.
Ouspensky said to me. But perhaps some have a picture of always
helping—"lending a helping hand", I believe it is called—without
noticing just how often and where you make a great many difficulties
and are no help at all. Remember that in all your relationships with
others, it is chiefly what you are not conscious of that complicates them.
Another person may see, say, that you make extraordinary difficulties
about your food, but you do not see it. Or he may observe that you
invariably say No when asked to do anything—a point which you, of
course, do not observe. On the contrary, you no doubt have a pleasant
picture that you always are ready to do anything or certainly would if
you had the time. Or again, you may always disagree, and though you
are not aware of it, others may be. This is a mode of making difficulties.
But there are very many modes, as, for instance, wanting to be first,
to have power, and so objecting to everyone and everything that does
1094
not give you this facility. This, of course, points to the inability to
tolerate the idea that anything is higher than oneself—one of the
commonest situations in self-adoration. So it is interesting to observe
oneself from the angle of making difficulties and we have to become
more conscious in that direction. Remember that acknowledgement
gives inner peace.
Great Amwell House, December 13, 1947
COMMENTARY ON AIM
WORK-IDEA
In the Work it is said that it is necessary to have aim. Without aim,
we in the Work drift.
COMMENTARY
In speaking of Aim once Mr. Ouspensky said that there is far aim
and near aim. "The situation is like this," he said, in so many words:
"Let us suppose a man is climbing at night up a road lit by gas-lamps.
As he nears the top he sees a gas-lamp shining and thinks it is close at
hand at the top of the hill. But on reaching the summit he sees it is
across a valley and many other gas-lamps intervene between him and
it. It is the same thing in the Work. We make an aim. But we do not
first see all that must be passed through before we can attain it." You
can see that Mr. Ouspensky's illustration can be added to—as, for
instance, we may find that the distant lamp one aims to reach lies on a
branch road so that one's direction has to be altered, and so on. But
whatever we add to it, the main idea is that people must have
patience and not expect instant results and also look at the quality
of the effort they are making in connection with their aim. Aim can
only be attained when that which wants it lies deep. It cannot be
made superficially—say, from False Personality. Why? Because it is
not deep enough.
Now on one occasion, at which my wife and myself were present,
Mr. Ouspensky had arranged, many years ago, for Gurdjieff to meet
a large number of extremely wealthy, prominent people in London.
After dinner, at which I noticed he ate and drank nothing, a meeting
was held. Looking round at all these people, after a long silence, he
said: "What do you want? If you can tell me, I will answer you whether
I can help you or not." No one said a word. It appeared that the
meeting was a failure. Yet I have often thought that at that moment,
under the magic of Gurdjieff, people became aware of what they wanted
as they were, and were ashamed to say anything. Shortly after, the
1095
meeting stopped, and everyone talked thirteen to the dozen. Why?
Because, for an instant, they had been brought into a state of consciousness that made them uncomfortable.
Now in making aim, one must want it. Often one can make a
theoretical aim—say, to be a better man, a better woman. But this is
not aim. I would say: "Well, better at what?" Aim must have a
definite formulation. To aim to be better in a vague sense, is not
asking. When it is said: "Ask and ye shall receive," it means to ask
something real, something you have seen and wish to change. Often I
have given you the example of a person going into a shop—the shop
of the Universe—and, going to the counter, the person is asked: "What
do you want?" The person hums and haws and says: "Oh, I really
don't know—I want—let me see—I want—let me see—I want—"
"Yes, what do you want?" asks the shop-keeper. The person does not
know. That is one reason why the Work teaches you in detail, specifically, what you must observe in yourself and work against. If you went
into that great shop and said: "Yes, I want to stop making these
internal accounts against others, I want to cease always blaming life
and others, always feeling resentful, and thinking that others have not
behaved rightly to me, always thinking that if I had had different
conditions I would have been marvellous. I want you to sell me something to make me see I am wrong, because I dimly see the idea and yet
I cannot get hold of it deeply enough." Well, what do you think? That
is a real request. Do you think the shop-keeper might hand you something? He might even smile slightly, even nicely. However, supposing
he hands you something—nearly always a pair of shoes—then he may
say in rather an insulting tone: "You've got to pay for all this. Hand
over some cash." And then all your account-making, all your self-pity,
all your sense of grievance that you lie on as on a bed in the background
of yourself, will probably make you resent this apparent roughness and
you will perhaps say: "How dare you speak to me like that?"—and the
shopkeeper will vanish and you will then be sure that he vanishes in a
smell of sulphur. For the Devil is, first, all that you think should but
does not pity you. However, the Devil is so often God. No, if you are
going to buy help, if you know slightly what it is you want to buy to
be of any use to you, remember you will have to pay for it. We live in
an enclosed Universe. How can you pay for getting rid of always being
aggrieved, hurt, upset—in short, of making continual, inner accounts?
The point is that there are two stages in aim. First, you begin through
self-observation to formulate an aim, more or less clear to you. Second,
you have to be able to pay to obtain it. Weak people make aim for a
day or so and are disappointed when nothing happens. They have no
idea of Second Force. They are like people who say: "I would like to
be a millionaire, or a Hollywood Star," and when nothing happens and
no one notices, they get sick in their souls and give it all up. They have
no idea that to get anywhere, either in life or in this Work, requires
effort. It requires money to pay for it—that is, effort which earns
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psychological money—that is, the power to buy from the great shop
that rewards effort—especially intelligent effort.
Now if you want a thing in life deeply enough, you may possibly
get it after hard work for years. It is the same in the Work. Notice that
to really want is to be independent of local, temporary, outside criticism.
False Personality depends on what others think of you—that is, an
audience. Real aim needs no audience. It is deeper, more genuine,
essential. If you make an aim in the Work—as, for instance, not to feel
always this background of tears, discontent, of being not appreciated—
which is one form of inner accounting—then, if you really want not to
have it, after some time it will be given you not to have it—usually in
short flashes. But only if you really want this aim and have realized
what it might mean not to have it will it eventually be given you fully.
You are tested first. People love their negative emotions. Remove these
by magic—then do you think they will praise you? No—they will
hate you. This is our curious situation, about which at one time
O. talked endlessly. To have a clean, hard bed to rest on is a difficult
acquisition.
Now the Work indicates that it does not matter what you have been
or what you are. It asks, in Gurdjieff's quiet words: "What do you
want?" Say you are content with yourself. Then you are dead. You
want nothing—and the Work is about what you want—not what you were,
or are, but what you want now. That is why, as you get older, the Work
can mean more and more to you—unless you have settled down long
ago into a complacent idea of yourself—that is, crystallized out in some
conventional views of what you should be. Work always means new
life. So it asks: "What do you want?" and cares little for what you have
been or are now.
Now it has been said many times in the Work that a man is not
defined by his income, distinctions, social level, the size of his body, or
his strength, etc., but by his understanding. So you will see that one thing
can be added here. A man is not only his understanding, but what he
wants—and what he wants will naturally arise from the level of his
understanding. I sometimes say to you, by way of commentary, that
we wish supremely to go "upstairs". Identifying, negative emotions,
fixed conventional attitudes, pictures, inner accounts, being always
asleep, imagination about yourself, buffers, stupid 'I's, absurd vanity
and pride—in fact, all the Work teaches practically—is not allowed
"upstairs". We have been taught what not to be, what to separate from,
what, as it were, not to wear—for clothes symbolize inner attitudes—if
we wish to reach a higher level. That is why dress is so important—
psychological dress. To go "upstairs", as I call it, requires special dress.
I mean, a man dressed in his life-egotism will not get far "upstairs".
Nor will he be able to buy anything at the great shop of which I have
spoken. You see, he will not for a moment believe he is wrongly dressed
for the job. He thinks he is worthy of climbing right up the Ray of
Creation and meeting the Absolute. I fear he might not be able to do
1097
so and have very good reason for saying this. But I admit it takes many
long years to realize first that one is not exactly God, and second that
one has all this time assumed one was. Yes, it is a difficult situation to
meet and a humiliating one that few can face. That is one reason why
the Work says that unless you can believe in Greater Mind you can
never do this Work. You may exclaim: "But I have never assumed I
am God!" Are you quite sure? Did you not always think you were
right? Have you not always in action behaved as if you were right
and the other person wrong? And perhaps without having observed
it, you have felt superior to others. Now in the Gospels which chiefly,
on the practical side, are about the Pharisee in us, very much is said
about this state of mind and the necessity of realizing as fact, not as
a lisping sentimental pretence, that one is nothing. The Work says:
"Unless a man, a woman, can begin to realize their own nothingness
as a fact of self-observation, nothing can take place in them." At
the Institute in France we were told: "Here Personality counts as
nothing."
Now aim made from False Personality only increases False Personality. How long it takes to observe what False Personality is in oneself!
Some think that the basic practical work, beginning with life-long
observation in oneself of False Personality, negative states, inner considering, different 'I's, fixed conventional attitudes, inner contradictions,
special self-imaginations, vanity and pride—those two Giants, as
Gurdjieff called them, that walk in front of us and arrange our lives
beforehand—as well as the gradual seeing of buffers, pictures, the
realization of one's mechanicalness, noticing how you behave and the
impression it makes on others—in short, all the Work teaches that one
must observe in oneself—I say, some seem to think that all this is
elementary. They could not be greater fools. This personal work of
self-observation is for all one's life. Out of it comes the dawning of real
aim, which is in its greatest formulation the desire to awaken. In my
case I seek to awaken from Dr. Nicoll—and so in each of your cases
the greatest aim is to awaken from what you have hitherto called
yourself. This is only possible through self-observation. Then people
find, specifically, what particular features in themselves keep them
identified with themselves and so prevent any awakening from taking
place. Then they can begin to see where their aim really lies. Then
indeed they can pray—that is, ask for help intelligently. They may get
it, but only by paying for it—that is, by the sacrifice of something
hitherto precious to them. You cannot get to a new state, to a higher
level—that is, you cannot go "upstairs"—unless you sacrifice something
belonging to your old state—and deeply from Essence. As you know
originally the Work said: "First of all you must sacrifice your suffering."
This is a very good aim. But have you ever thought that unless you
observe yourself daily you will never see your form of suffering? It takes
years and years of work, and if you cannot see a thing in yourself, how
on earth do you expect to change it? Can you change what you are
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unconscious of? So I repeat—that self-observation along the original
lines of the Work is the continual task of all connected with my Branch
of this Work.
Great Amwell House, December 20, 1947
ONE OF THE WORK-IDEAS ABOUT IMAGINATION
WORK-IDEA
The Work says, in speaking of the terrible power of imagination to
keep mankind asleep, amongst the many other factors that do so, that
people can roughly bo divided as follows:
(1) Some people dream their dreams passively;
(2) Some people talk their dreams;
(3) Some act their dreams.
COMMENTARY
One must understand that, in speaking of "dreams", what is meant
here is one's forms of imagination, one's day-dreams, one's phantasies
about oneself, about what one would like to be taken as, about what one
really feels one is—although unfortunately no one seems to take any
notice of all these secret ideas of our value.
In speaking on one occasion about imagination, Mr. Ouspensky
said: "We have only a few typical forms of mechanical, self-active
imagination about ourselves—that is, self-imagination—say, four or
five. (I am not speaking of directed imagination.) It is important to
make these unconscious forms of imagination conscious and to realize
that they act on oneself at all moments." He added, in so many words:
"A form of imagination about oneself, allowed to act without our being
conscious of it, can spoil one's life. And two people wishing to unite, if
their forms of mechanical imagination are incompatible, can become
mutually destructive." This means that two people can, owing to the
dominance of their different unobserved phantasies about themselves,
mutually destroy one another psychologically, even although they wish
to come together as far as they know. Remember that one psychology
relates itself to another psychology. It is not a question of the visible
bodies uniting but of the invisible bodies—that is, the psychologies.
A very superficial and tiresome relation comes through bodies trying
to unite without the slightest idea that the psychologies must do so.
Love is psychological, but it is practically always imagination.
Looking backward on what teaching has been given in the past in
the form of fairy-stories, there is the Cinderella phantasy. I heard the
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other day that a woman was jealous of a certain royal duchess. One
might think it inconceivable that one should be jealous of a person one
did not know. But if anyone has a strong Cinderella phantasy, then it
becomes more understandable. The phantasy makes one jealous—not the
person. I read somewhere that in mediaeval times at the millenium
many women had the phantasy that they might give birth to Christ
at his second coming. This does not seem to be a prevalent form of
imagination nowadays. The point is that when a phantasy, a powerful
form of imagination, has a hypnotic effect, people behave in an extraordinary way—simply because of the form of imagination dominating
them at that period. In a discussion with Mr. Ouspensky I once said
that history is nearly useless, because no one can ever really record what
happens and that recent psychological tests had shewn that everyone
reports an event differently and instead of real records we have people's
opinions and points of view. He said briefly: "All history is imagination." He meant, I think, that what people think is true about historical
people is imaginary—that is, that so-called history is about imaginary
people and so history is imagination. I said, feeling a little wicked,
"What about dates?" He said: "Oh, yes, dates are facts—nothing else
is. And I can never remember dates." And, looking across at me with
a smile he said: "When did Charles the Second live?" I said: "The
only date that I know is 1066 and I have no idea what it refers to."
Now I would add to this that most of our memory of the past, most of
our ideas of other people, and above all our ideas of ourselves, are
mainly imagination. What is the only thing that can master imagination?
The answer is memory. I do not mean what we ordinarily call memory.
I refer to Work-memory—that is, relatively speaking, conscious memory—
which begins with the conscious intake of impressions through selfobservation.
Now to return: let us take the man, the woman, who comes under
the category (1)—that is, some people dream their dreams passively. Look at
the long ribbon-road, at night, villa after villa. Do you think that their
inhabitants have not dreamed phantasies? Yes, but they either say
nothing or—to come to category (2)—they may talk about them—as,
for example: "Oh, if only I could meet so and so. I know he really
would understand me." Yes, but if you met a conscious man who
understood you he would not be quite what you asked for. Why?
Because through imagination you take yourself as what you imagine
you are-—which is not the case. You are not what you imagine you are,
and you have got eventually in the Work to realize this. This indeed
is the only real stimulus for working on oneself—seeing one is not what
one imagines. It is very strong medicine, which only a few can take.
So realization and memory are powerful agents to use. Now the
more the mists of imagination clear away, the more you feel Real 'I'.
Imaginary 'I' needs imagination to support itself. As long as one's life
is governed by Imaginary 'I' it must of necessity be unreal. I can assure
you that the gradual loss of imagination, when you accept the con1100
trolling influences of the Work, does not lead to any inner impoverishment. On the contrary, it turns one into rich and inexhaustible fields
of new understanding, where the plague of yourself no longer exists.
As long as one is surrounded by intractable, unchallenged, and even
violent illusions (which, by the way, in the face of great danger may fall
away completely for the time being) one is stifled by imagination—for
all illusions are due to the work of imagination. Take the comfortable
well-dressed, self-complacent person, clothed internally in all sorts of
vain imaginations—do you think that that is a state of being awake?
Or is it a state of being asleep? Clearly such a person, man or woman,
must be stung into awakening from spiritual death. Here we can see
the work of imagination keeping people fast asleep in all sorts of conceits
and vanities, and even the continual reverses and tragedies of life will
not awaken them. As physical death approaches many life-illusions
weaken—leaving what? A man alive, or a man dead, perhaps for years.
Only what is real can withstand death. Christ said that only love of
God can withstand death. And it is very strange to reflect upon and get
to know what is real in oneself. No orthodox catalogue of standard
virtues can assist one here, for what is real in a person is unique to him
or her. There is no standard yard-stick to measure a man or woman.
We are born unique, we are born to awaken, and so we are born to
reach Real 'I' in ourselves and Real 'I' is unique in every case. So
each must eventually follow his individual pathway to Real 'I'. Yes—but
there are general truths about how to reach it—and the Work teaches
them and they must be obeyed first of all. For example, no one can
reach Real 'I' if the love of being negative continues to be greater than
the desire to separate from negative emotions. The momentary
experience of this separation is freedom. Here one set of emotions
must contend with another set of emotions—and for a long time—for
only one emotion can overcome another emotion. A man is his chief
love. Now if the valuation of the Work becomes stronger—and that
means love of it—then it will contend with the love of being negative,
and, in fact, with all the Work teaches us to observe and separate from.
The Work, in short, will fight for you. Only in this way can Real 'I'
be approached. But if one mistakes Real 'I'—if one takes Imaginary 'I'
as Real 'I'—then one has not begun to work on oneself and so is a
failure in the sense of all esoteric teaching and so in the Gospel-sense,
however successful and respected in life one is. One has mistaken the
real meaning of one's existence on this low-placed planet, on which the
dangerous experiment of a self-developing organism is being tried out.
In speaking about imagination we must erect a background from
which to speak, so as to see where and what imagination is. Mechanical
self-running imagination keeps us asleep. Imaginary 'I' is composed of
imagination. Imaginary 'I' must be gradually drained of its force. That
is a plain statement of the situation and of what the Work is speaking
to us about all the time.
Let us take Category (3)—namely, some people act their dreams—
1101
that is, their forms of imagination. These people are different from
Category (1)—namely, those who dream their dreams—that is, do not
try to act them. In this connection, watch a man, a woman, in a passive
state of imagination. Their eyes are always unfocussed. They seem
rather deaf and blind. They have very interesting expressions on their
faces—not lively expressions, but rather sad, withdrawn expressions,
yet not quite so, because one can see that they have at the same time
some deep, inner satisfaction going on within them. What is happening?
Their force is being drained by their mechanical self-running imagination. "They are", said Mr. Ouspensky once, "attending a very important cinema-film, which is very expensive." Yes—imagination can
satisfy every centre. It certainly can if you notice the fact. But
Category (3) are those who seek to act their dreams—try to relate
external life to their internal phantasies. The life of uncontrolled
imagination absorbs a person and drains force and there is no connection with what we call "reality". The third Category seeks to make
external reality correspond with the internal phantasy. So Mr.
Ouspensky said that those who act their dreams are quite different from
those who dream their dreams, or those who talk their dreams. Yet
those who act their dreams do so from a phantasy. It is not yet real.
That is the point. They have, say, a phantasy of beating some record
of speed. They do so—and yet it is not they but their imagination—
and that is why one often wonders that they are never content, but try
again to beat their previous record. The reason is that imagination is
gripping them so that they can never rest, for imagination is insatiable
and will not be corrected by experience. Such a man is not doing from
his real side what he is doing. He is driven by something not himself
—namely, by the power of Imaginary 'I'. He is following an imagination
of himself—say, as being the finest, or cleverest, or most polished, or
bravest fellow on earth. And yet the tragedy is that all that is real in
him does not really want to do that which Imaginary 'I' makes him do.
He is, in short, acting his imagination, which is insatiable and which
will torment him to further efforts to satisfy his idea, his phantasy of
himself. It is the same, of course, with women. So many people,
brought up on stories and legends which have filled their imagination,
continue in life trying to act these acquired phantasies. All this is
Imaginary 'I'. The Work teaches us that Real 'I' exists, but cannot be
approached as long as Imaginary 'I' dominates us.
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Great Amwell House, January 3, 1948
THE STEP-DIAGRAM
This Work-Diagram has not been given for some time. I am going
to give it as briefly as possible.
The Work teaches that the creation of the Universe is according to
the Law of Three and the Law of Seven and is a descending Octave in
which at each level or note the Law of Three operates so that each
successive manifestation is under more and more laws or forces, from
the Absolute down to our Earth and Moon. This is our Ray of Creation.
The Absolute is under one law—the Will of the Absolute—and so is
unconditioned. The First Order of Worlds is under 3 laws, because
all manifestation is due to 3 forces meeting at a point and cooperating, as active, passive and neutralizing. The Second Order of
Worlds manifested is under the 3 forces of its own manifestation and
3 forces from the First Order of Worlds. The Third Order of
manifested Worlds is under 3 laws of its own, 6 laws from the
Order immediately above, and 3 laws directly from the First Order
—so is under 12 laws—and so on, down to our Earth under 48 and
our Moon under 96. You see, therefore, that creation is limitation by
scale—the lowest being under most and the highest under least laws.
This is the game. I mean that we live far down in the descending scale
so the Will of the Absolute can only reach us indirectly through
increasing mechanical laws. To reach us directly—which would be
unbearable—all the instrumental notes in the Octave would have to
be destroyed. That is, the laws of the game would have to be abrogated
and so everything would be destroyed. That is why it is possible to
speak of the Universe as a game.
When you realize that the Universe is built on the principle of scale,
you can understand that the energies at work in the upper parts of the
Ray of Creation are finer than those acting in the lower parts. These
finer and coarser energies are called Hydrogens in the Work. I am not
going to give you the complex diagrams that belong to this idea, but
ask you simply to accept that energies are finer and coarser and are
called Hydrogens. Comparatively speaking, we know that in the known
octaves of physical energies the energy representing, say, violet light
is "finer" than that representing red light—that is, of greater frequency
of vibration; and passing upwards a little in the scale of these known
physical energies, X-Rays are found which are "finer" than violet light,
so much so that they can pass through the body; and so on. So one
can, by analogy, conceive how the energy of the Absolute can pass
through everything. Now you have heard that the centres in Man
work with different energies or Hydrogens, according to their speed
of action. Formatory Centre works with Hydrogen of a density represented by the figure 48. Sex-Centre works with a Hydrogen of a density
represented by the figure 12—that is, a much finer energy. Moving
1103
Centre works with Hydrogen 24—and so is far quicker than Formatory
Centre—actually about 30,000 times, as we notice when running downstairs and suddenly trying to "think" how we are doing it. Instinctive
Centre, the wizard alchemist that attends to the inner working of the
organism, works with Hydrogen 24 and Emotional Centre also—or
should do so. The Higher Emotional Centre works with Hydrogen 12
and the Higher Mental Centre works with Hydrogen 6. In all these
centres Time is different—on the principle that "a thousand years (in
the sight of God) are but as yesterday". A moment of Consciousness in
Higher Mental Centre would seem as years of our Time. And so, also,
Time in each note or level of the Ray of Creation is different. Each
cosmos within cosmos has a different Time. 30,000 years of our Time
is to a consciousness at the level of the Sun merely a flash. Finally, the
Work teaches that the whole Universe is growing, apart from failures
in it.
Now we come to the Step-Diagram. This represents the Universe
as a strange kind of psycho-physical digestive-tube in which everything
eats and is eaten. According to this diagram and its inner significance
everything is defined by what it eats and what eats it. We eat all sorts of
things, but we do not imagine that all sorts of things also eat us, although
after a time on this planet we may come to suspect it. Recollect that
we are told that, if we are asleep in life, we feed the Moon—that is,
when we are identified and negative, and so on. So you see we must
grasp that a man may be eaten in many senses—not merely physical.
Everything is food for something else, and something else is again food
for something else. Pain and useless suffering feed the Moon, the body
the Earth.
Now we can see in visible nature that life eats life. Animals, birds,
fishes, insects, eat each other. We eat them. Or again, a cow eats grass
and we eat the cow and so on. If everything living ate the same thing,
living creation would be impossible. Things are cleverly fitted in, often
into very odd corners. One thing is food for another in very odd ways.
So you see that when it is said that everything is defined by what it eats
and what eats it, the definition is very interesting. Now we must add
one thing to this Work-definition. A thing, the Work says, is defined
by what it eats, by what eats it, and by the medium in which it lives. A fish and
a bird, for instance, live in different mediums. Many fish live on fish
and many birds live on fish—but they belong to different mediums.
Again, the possible things that may eat fish are not identical with the
possible things that can eat birds, and so on.
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1105
You will notice that Man is taken as Hydrogen 24 in this StepDiagram. This means that Man is essentially of this order or quality
—namely, Hydrogen 24. As such he eats Hydrogen 96. Hydrogen 96 is
his food. He does not eat whole animals. And in turn he is eaten by
higher Beings, who are represented by Hydrogen 6. Now, if you will
notice, Man as 24 is eaten by Beings called "Archangels", whose Being
is defined by Hydrogen 6 and not by "Angels" whose being is represented
by Hydrogen 12. But if Man were Hydrogen 48 he would be eaten by
what are called "Angels" or "Planetary Gods". If Man's being were
represented by Hydrogen 96, he would be eaten by Man. This is a very
curious point—but I do not propose to discuss it. As I said the StepDiagram has not been given for some time and I have given it as briefly
as possible.
Great Amwell House, January 10, 1948
NOTES ON SELF-OBSERVATION
The object of self-observation, as this Work teaches, is to let a
Ray of Light into our inner darkness. The discipline of self-observation
is a life-long one, because we do not know ourselves although we
imagine we do, and because what we imagine we know is so often wrong.
This state is our inner darkness, into which a Ray of Light must
penetrate. What is the Ray of Light? It is Consciousness. In short,
we have to make ourselves more conscious to ourselves. What we are
not conscious of remains in the dark. It belongs to the dark side of us.
As you have heard, this Work divides Man into Conscious and
Mechanical Humanity. We, as belonging to Mechanical Humanity,
need to strive to become more conscious and we begin by becoming
more conscious to ourselves of ourselves—that is, by letting this Ray
of Light into this inner darkness by the method of uncritical, impersonal
self-observation, which establishes Observing 'I' in ourselves and begins
to make us slowly objective to ourselves. This changes one's feeling of
'I'. The Observing 'I' eventually collects round it all those 'I's which
wish to awaken and when this state is reached of inner re-arrangement
among the different 'I's a temporary and substitute Real 'I' is formed
termed "Deputy-Steward". The more one studies, reflects upon, and
ponders and practises the teachings of the Work, and sees, through
inner perception, the truths contained in them, the stronger "DeputySteward" will become. Eventually, he attracts in flashes "Steward"
from above—that is, from a higher level in himself—and behind
"Steward" is Real 'I'.
Now Real 'I' cannot appear if a man is in a state of Inner Darkness.
If it were to, the man would go mad. Yet Man was created to reach
1106
Real 'I' in himself and not to go mad. All the above is stating the inner
meaning of the Work from one angle. Always remember that, with
our limited minds, the Work itself as a whole can only be stated now
from this angle and now from that angle. Notice, for instance, we are
not speaking of that level of Consciousness called the level of SelfRemembering, nor that further level, the attainment of which gives us
Objective Consciousness, with which Real 'I' is connected. We are
speaking only of the necessity of making ourselves more and more
conscious to ourselves. As we are, we are identified with ourselves—that
is, not conscious of ourselves. In the Work-sense, being identified means
not being conscious. And we have recently spoken of how it is in the
interests of certain planetary forces to keep Man asleep and use him,
by making him identified, both with his idea of himself—that is, with
his False Personality—and also with every typical event, of which there
are only a certain number, which recur and recur until the man
awakens to this simple fact and seeks to be no longer identified with all
of them. Only the acquisition of Consciousness—that is, "light"—can
separate us from the darkness of being always identified. If you become
conscious that you are lame because your shoes do not fit you, you will
not groan and sigh and remain identified with this useless suffering.
You will observe how you walk and become conscious and begin to
make better shoes. But for this to happen one must buy leather from
the merchants who sell it and this is not so easy. Conscious Humanity
has leather to sell and quite cheaply. But they cannot use violence and
insist that Mechanical Humanity should buy it, for this would be against
the law that Man is created a self-developing organism. Notice—-a
self-developing organism. To compel would therefore be against the
esoteric laws relating to Man and his meaning. He would be compelled
to develop—and, of course, could not develop at all—even in his
slightest intimate and significant communions, say, with the stars and
the sea—unless it was permitted and officially approved. Everything
real in a man or a woman can only grow through their own will, their
own feeling, their own understanding, their own consent, their own
internal perception that a thing is so.
Now impressions coming from outside via the senses fall on phonograph-rolls in centres and register themselves there. These rolls grow
a new skin when filled, yet what underlies is still there and can speak,
only most is now in darkness—that is, unconscious. They are really
four-dimensional rolls. Let us take a simple example of one of the
"dark sides" of oneself. Each of you sings your typical song or songs
but does not know it. The Work says: "Try to observe your songs".
That is all it says. Do you say you have no songs to sing? Try again
—try this time to observe yourself; try to listen ; try to notice yourself ; try to hear what you are saying. Did you say just now that you
never sing? You must be a very exceptional man or woman. You say
that you are? Well, in that case, why come here, where no one is
exceptional in your sense? I can assure you you sing—and sing very
1107
well, probably. You have perhaps two or three good songs to sing,
but you are not aware, not conscious of them. They just come out—
and perhaps not quite into the open. In any case you may sing them
softly to yourself all day. They are always negative songs. They spring
from the negative part of the Emotional Centre—that part that we have
to dig up and level and grow another crop on. Now people do not see
how these often not openly expressed songs, if for years indulged in—
such as the classical song called "Poor Little Me"—they do not see that
these songs, which are so dangerous, so sweet, and so useless, constantly
re-infect their inner state. They charm you to a tear—yes, but not
merely that—they draw force from you. You know that all negative
emotions drain you of force. We were taught in the early days that the
constant indulgence of negative states, of self-pity, complaining, disliking, the love of being unhappy, of disagreeing as a fine art, and all
the rest, is just as if you were to cut an artery at the wrist and let the
blood drip all day—and then say you feel miserable.
*
*
*
Now things exist and have power over us because we are not
properly conscious of them. The more unconscious a thing, the more
power it exerts on us and the more mechanical our behaviour. To bring
a thing up into the light of Consciousness is to rob it of its power. For
this, long self-observation is needed and much patience with oneself.
We observe—but not fully. Full self-observation takes time—years—
one life-time perhaps. You have heard how Mr. Ouspensky's teacher
said that this Work, which comes from an unknown source, can be
called esoteric Christianity. He said that if we really understood what
the Gospels were saying, we would see it is just what the Work says.
As an example bearing on what we have just been saying about the
dark side of us and the necessity of becoming more conscious, I will
take the parable about the eye being the lamp of the body. Christ says:
"The lamp of the body is thine eye; when thine eye is single,
thy whole body is full of light, but when it is evil thy body is full
of darkness. Look therefore whether the light that is in thee be not
darkness. If therefore thy whole body is full of light, having no part
dark, it shall be wholly full of light, as when the lamp with its
bright shining doth give thee light."
(Luke XI 34-36)
Here Christ speaks clearly about the importance of "having no part
dark" in oneself—the term body being used here for the psychological
body. Now to act mechanically is evil and to act consciously is not evil.
If we were a unity—that is, single—we would act consciously. But we
are not a unity but a many—a multitude of different 'I's which we do
not know, do not observe. This is darkness. So the Work speaks so
much about letting in this Ray of Light by self-observation into our
darkness.
1108
Great Amwell House, January 17, 1948
6144
At all times in the Work it is necessary to get things clear, to make
right connections, to fight imagination, to struggle with lies and separate
from negative states. Everything can be joined together wrongly.
Everything, I repeat, can be wrongly connected, wrongly taken, misunderstood, and so on. So an effort of mind is necessary to get things
clearer for oneself. Notice how one can believe almost obvious lies.
Notice scandal and its effects on you. Notice propaganda. In short,
notice how easily a man, a woman, can be hypnotized. Our centres
work almost in the dark. As a consequence, things pass towards the
"Moon", to the region of dimness and wrong, evil, and even monstrous
connections, to the place where there is absence of all truth, to superstitions, to fear yielding to fear, to where everything is half-lit and
there is no strength of right reasoning. As was seen in the Step-Diagram,
at the bottom of it there is a number 6144 about which it is said briefly
that there where it exists is no Third Force. Here First and Second
Force—that is, Active and Passive Force, which are opposites—are most
widely separated and no right conjoining of them via a Third or
Neutralizing Force is possible. We can deduce that this will therefore
be the region of the greatest improbabilities where nothing means
anything and everything is chaos. Now, as the Work teaches, it is
necessary to say sometimes: "I can work". To say to oneself: "I can
work" is a good thing and gives a little shock to oneself. It scatters
those stealthy negative 'I's that tend to come in through one's unguarded
spots. Of course, if we were properly conscious, if there were "no part
dark" in us, the light of Consciousness would prevent any such approach
of lying and unpleasant 'I's and nothing would be unguarded. As we
are, we have many unlit places that let in all sorts of wrong-minded 'I's
that seek to pervert whatever "truth" surrounds us so as to get at
everything good both in Personality and Essence. This is a struggle
that is worth-while and in it it is necessary to renew the sense of the
truth of the Work continually in one's most interior, private, real, almost
wordless thought. Now you must understand that in the Step-Diagram,
in spite of the semi-physical meaning of the numbers, a man can fall
down it spiritually, psychologically—yes—to the bottom of it perhaps
—for every diagram in the Work, taken literally, refers in a certain
sense to material things and, taken psychologically, to psychological
things.
Now we come to another Work-Phrase: "One must create oneself".
What then, is it that one must create? That is a big question. I will
answer briefly: first of all, a mechanical man, who is a machine driven
by external life and its events, has not yet created himself, however
successful. And secondly, to create oneself one must create something
in oneself that can gradually resist life and its effects and keep its inner
1109
balance. This latter begins only through some form of truth in which
one believes and which one is tested by every day. There is life-truth
and Work-truth. So it is said: "Between you and life the Work must
stand." This is really the First Conscious Shock, called Self-Remembering—but there are many other ways of defining what that effort called
the shock of Self-Remembering means. You can get dragged down,
you can get under the power of life, you can get identified with any of the
experiences on the turning wheel of the events in life.
Now no one can create himself save through right effort. A man
turned outwards who is led by life solely does not create himself. His
machine works the wrong way round. He will never reach Real 'I' in
himself and will not wish to. But let us take a man who can be in life
and remember the Work at the same time and apply it. He then leads
a double life. And this is exactly the starting-point. He will have to
make a certain kind
effort. He will see outer life as one thing and its
effects on him as another thing. He will see both together. This is right
effort, and one of the first definitions of the First Conscious Shock.
He is conscious
This definition is represented by two arrows
outwards and inwards. Something in life depresses a man, say, lack of a
nice letter. As an ordinary man not working on himself his situation
is just that. He is bowled out by such a typical event. He is identified
with his depression caused by this typical event. As a man in the Work
he notices his depression and notices what causes it. He notices both
his impression and the depression and is not either of them. This is one
formulation of right effort. But to do this he must know how to keep
more or less awake and not identify with the effects of impressions
coming in—that is, with the various events he inevitably and inescapably
finds himself in at every moment. To take your life differently you
must not try to alter life but begin to notice the effects of life upon you
and not simply be these effects. If some of you could understand more of
what this means, it would help you. There are a certain number of
events in life and these are always recurring, not only to you but to
everyone else. At this moment, say, 60 million people are depressed
because they have not received a nice letter. Yes—and you are one of
them, let us suppose. So you are depressed—not only that, but you are
depression and depression is you. Now right effort here is to notice the
cause and notice the effect of the cause in yourself and be conscious of
both. In that way you get to real knowledge of your machine. The
Work says we are machines—as long as we do not know ourselves. A
machine cannot know itself. But a man-machine can get to know itself.
That is the difference. All right effort is to know our machine and not
go always, every moment, with its mechanical reactions. Then something else is created in oneself. Something forms behind this machinery,
which you deny for so long, and this leads eventually to Real 'I'. At
least this is the way. We are machines because Real 'I' or Master
does not control us. Instead we are controlled by the events of life,
entering us as impressions. That is, we are not controlled from within,
mo
as we should be, but from outside things. So we arc machines. But we
were not made to be machines, but with the possibility of being machines
unless we remember ourselves. That is, we were made with the possibility
of creating ourselves and ceasing to be machines. The starting-point
is the observing of one's machinery and realizing that it is not 'I' but
IT that is acting all the time. The machine is acting—or rather, reacting. This you call 'I'. No, it is the machine. All right effort is about
this question—this realizing that what one has taken as Really Oneself is
not really yourself but is a machinery, a mechanicalness laid down
chiefly by imitation in your life. And what tragedies we suffer from this
mistake we keep on making about ourselves. I remind you again of
what Mr. Ouspensky said. He asked: "What is this Work about?"
People said: "To remember", and so on. There were many answers.
What was the answer? I said: "To make Nicoll passive". He agreed.
And I fancy others agreed by the way they stared at me with lorgnettes
and eye-glasses. An amusing thought, is it not, to think that some
believed that this Work and all the esoteric teaching through the ages
behind it was simply to make "Nicoll" passive. Yet, if you reflect, it
is quite true—in my case Yes, but it is also true in your case.
*
*
*
Now the Work constitutes a Third Force which is different from
the Third Force of Life. We spoke briefly about 6144 as having no
Third Force connected with it and said that this means the widest
separation of the opposites (since nothing can draw them into co-operation) and the region of the greatest improbabilities. With no Third
Force there would be no conjunction. This Work and all esotericism
is to attain Unity. At the top of the Step-Diagram is the Unity of the
Absolute. Now it is said that the Third Force of Life will not bring
about that degree of Unity in ourselves represented by Real 'I' but
leaves us in multiplicity, but that the Third Force of the Work leads
to Unity. So you can see how this Work with the Third Force it
conducts acts in a reverse way and is the antithesis of that psychological
region signified by the number 6144. If the Work acts through us we
will not go downwards in the Step-Diagram taken psychologically but
move upwards. At the top of the Step-Diagram is absolute Unity or
God the Supreme, the Greatest Meaning. At the bottom is this state
represented by the figures 6144 where everything is meaningless. All
right effort is therefore towards this increasing Unity which is only
accomplished by increasing Consciousness. The more irreconcilable
opposites one has in oneself the less meanings one has to live by. Union
of opposites gives greatest meaning. Meaning springs from the conjunction and harmonizing of the opposites brought about through the
connecting force called Third or Neutralizing Force. This Neutralizing
Force makes the two hitherto hostile back-to-back opposites turn round
and face one another and so co-operate and produce something, instead
1111
of being at war with each other. When I said to you that you must
bring the dark side—the other side of you—the side not conscious to
you—into the light of Consciousness, and not imagine that what you
admit to Consciousness is all of you, I was speaking of this bringing
together of opposites in yourself—of contradictions not acknowledged
or even noticed. There is so much to understand here that it is
impossible to speak of save over a long time. Yet all this time the Work
has been telling you about it in everything it says. All right effort is
to increase Consciousness—one's Consciousness of oneself. But many
things, particularly buffers, prevent us. We are all angels and everyone
is a devil, more or less. We never behave in a rotten way to anyone.
Of course not. Yet is not it strange that our Consciousness is not full
enough to shed light on both sides of a buffer so that we behold fur
ourselves our inner contradictions? Well, perhaps it is not so strange
when you reflect that Man was made a self-developing organism—that
is, to create himself—and that if he never understands this he can drop
down to total meaninglessness represented by the figure 6144. And, if
you can follow me, total meaninglessness is total darkness. So it is
necessary, as was said at the start of the paper, to fight hard.
Great Amwell House, January 24, 1948
ESSENCE AND PERSONALITY
WORK-IDEA.
To-day we speak again of what the Work teaches about Essence
and Personality. The Work says we are born as Essence. As very
little children we are in Essence. But Essence, which is the real part
of us, is very small, primitive and undeveloped. Through our contact
with life, through Papa and Mamma and nurses and teachers, we
develop Personality which surrounds Essence but does not make Essence
grow. Personality grows—not Essence—not the real part of you. Then
around Personality there forms False Personality, through which we
imagine we are real people. Connected with False Personality is
Imaginary 'I'—that is, we imagine we have a real, unchanging,
permanent thing called 'I'. The Work, however, teaches that we have
not got Real 'I', but only Imaginary 'I', and that, although Real 'I'
exists in us and can be reached, we are not in touch with it and cannot
be as long as we imagine we have it. One of the powers of imagination
is to persuade us we have a thing when we have not. I may imagine I
have a gun and someone comes and asks me if I want a gun and I say
I have one. Then I find I have not one. That is, I imagine I have
something valuable and, being offered it, I refuse it because I imagine I
1112
have it. Later I discover I haven't it. This is one of the powers of
imagination which act universally on Man. As you know, the Work
says that mankind is asleep, partly owing to a deliberate hypnotism to
keep it asleep, and that if a man wishes to awaken from the Earth-Sleep
in which all mankind is used and so made into a pain-factory for other
purposes than its own—he must struggle with imagination.
Now we come to the Commentary on the above Work-teaching:
COMMENTARY
To awaken from sleep is to grow, to develop. A man, a woman, can
only grow and develop internally through positive ideas. Negative ideas
put mankind asleep: positive ideas awaken mankind. It was said earlier
that one way of defining what positive ideas mean is that anything that
strengthens False Personality is not a positive idea. No one can develop
inwardly via False Personality. The Works says that internally none of
us is grown up. It says that if we were war would cease at once. In
relationship to our job, to our life-affairs, in which we have been trained,
we may appear real men and real women. We look modestly important,
we make the right speeches and the right movements. We wear
costumes and uniforms, we have carefully arranged faces and expressions, and we manage things as long as they are in the line of our
training. But take such a person aside, along a line not familiar, and
he or she becomes embarrassed, and uncomfortable or, as is usually
said, "out of his depth".
This is the first education—imposed by life—that is, the education
of the Personality. This Work is about the second education, in which
Personality must be weakened and the real part of us—namely, Essence
—grow. And certainly, as most of us already know, this is a very
difficult job. But if we seek new meaning—and meaning is the most
important thing, for we live by meaning—we have to separate from
old, worn-out meaning in order to let in new meaning for our existences.
Otherwise we die—although our bodies go on living. How many dead
walk the streets and sit in clubs. New meaning is only possible for us
through positive ideas. You will not, after a time, get new meaning from
life-ideas.
*
*
*
There was once upon a time a song—I suppose a vulgar song, no
doubt, to some—in which the phrase occurs: "Where did you get that
hat?" Let us use this, no doubt, vulgar phrase, as a starting-point. A
man is clothed physically by clothes and he is clothed mentally or
psychologically by truth—that is, by the truth he follows. The body is
clothed by physical clothes and what you think is truth clothes your
mind-body. A man, a woman, is first a physical body. I say first in
view of the senses. One sees a man's visible body, a woman's visible
body, first. But this man, this woman, has also an invisible psychology,
1113
quite possibly angelic, and also quite possibly devilish. However, the
physical body, the sense-given appearance, may not shew us in the
least the nature of the person's psychology. In proposing, say, one may
notice a nasty expression, temporarily, but the beauty of the visible
body re-assures one and one continues trustfully. However, the nasty
expression for a moment revealed the nature of the inner psychology
—that is, the kind of psychological body that is attached no doubt to
this most marvellous physical body. Is it not strange that, as far as I
can see, people have to be over seventy or eighty, before they understand this, in spite of various smart cliches such as "Things are not as
they appear" or "All is not gold that glitters" and so on. And then they
are too old to remember what it was they wanted to remember, which
saves them a lot of trouble. All the same it is a remarkable fact that a
man with a heavy frown or a woman with a bitter look, who at the
moment of proposing neither frowns nor looks bitter, expects the deep,
long causes of that frown and the deep, long causes of that bitter look
to vanish through the so-called power of love for ever. So it is not
surprising that this Work teaches that Man is asleep—and that, notice,
includes Woman, who also is asleep in her own way just as much as
Man is, only not quite in the same way, I have noticed.
Now I return to the "hat". That part of the invisible psychology or
psychological body of a person that is connected with how he or she
thinks is the "hat"—the thinking-cap. The head thinks—so its covering
is what clothes it. A person thinks from what to that person is truth.
You think from what you take as truth. What forms of truth you have
been taught and accept constitute your "hat". So it is a legitimate
question to ask a person, not only: "Why do you think this or that is
true?" but "Where did you get that hat?" which equals the question:
"Why think like that?" The answer is, of course: "Because I was
brought up to think like that". Yes, but another person, brought up
differently, thinks in another way—that is, wears another hat, of a
different colour or a quite different shape. And so on and so on. Yet
each thinks he thinks aright and each thinks he thinks from absolute
truth. So everyone wears a different hat—an invisible hat, because
it belongs to the invisible body—that is, the person's acquired
psychology.
Now are you all fully aware that although you live in visible bodies
seen clearly and signal to each other as best you can, and usually very
clumsily, you really live in your thoughts, feelings, moods, desires,
ambitions, and so on, which are invisible? So you are really invisible,
enclosed in a visible body. Do you see this yet? You may be heartbroken, as the saying is, and yet appear visibly cheerful. Why is it that
people cannot take in the idea that they themselves live in their invisible
side, known only to them through their own consciousness? So look
at this vision: here we are visible to one another as physical bodies but
almost totally invisible to one another in any real sense. So, being really
invisible, you are therefore all alone—not lonely—but alone. This is
1114
one thing we have to grasp from height to depth of all the meaning it
contains. It is the only thing that saves us from continual self-pity.
It is no-one's fault that you are not understood—for you are invisible
and no-one can know you. Only you can know yourself. So the Work
says: "Begin with trying to understand yourself". Yes—a very big
task. But it shifts effort to the right place. However, imagination steps
in here to keep you fast asleep. It says: "Of course I know myself—of
course I understand myself". The answer is: "You do not and as long
as you are under this illusion nothing will change for you. Everything
will remain the same. You will go through the same troubles, the same
unhappiness, and the same tragedies. There is only one way to change
all that and that is to change yourself, change your own being and life
will change. Try to change life and everything will be the same, even
if you go to the uttermost parts of the Earth."
Now here we have one of the positive ideas of the Work—namely,
"To change things, to change his life, a man must first change himself.
And in order to change himself he must find a teaching that will tell
him how to do so. He must be willing to be taught new knowledge, new
truth, and to begin to think in a new way. If he continues to think from
the knowledge he has acquired, he will continue to think in the old way
and then nothing can change. Only thinking in a new way can change
a man."
Now a life-idea—that is, a negative idea—begins with changing
outer life, changing your house, income, servants, and so on. A Workidea begins with changing yourself. This is a positive idea. If you remain
the same man, the same woman, wherever you go you will attract the
same troubles, the same anxieties. The Work says: "Your being attracts
your life." If you do not change your being—the kind of person you
mechanically are by upbringing—nothing can possibly change for you
in outer life. You will always attract the same kind of things, the same
situations, the same troubles." So the Work teaches in this second
education that one's task is to begin to try to change one's being, and
not to try to change outer conditions. This is a positive idea.
Great Amwell House, January 31, 1948
INTERNAL CONSIDERING AND INNER TALKING
Part I.—We have to struggle with unnecessary emotions. Energy that
goes into unnecessary emotions is lost. You see it is raining and feel,
say, a sort of hostility or dislike or slight depression. This is unnecessary
emotion. People seem to get caught by everything that does not
correspond with their expectations. That is, they identify with the fact
that it is raining or cold or blowing a gale, because they did not expect
1115
it. They say, "Tut, tut", and feel a little upset. People seem to expect
everything save what does happen. Of course, if you expect an
unpleasant thing to happen and it does happen, your expectation protects you. Again, if you expect an unpleasant thing to happen and it
does not, you are relieved. But, as was said before, most of us seem to
have forms of expectation that lead us to expect everything save what
does happen. In consequence, a great many unnecessary emotions are
made and a lot of energy is lost in disappointment and internal considering—for a person may even internally consider to such a degree
that if it rains on his dear little birthday he feels the Universe and all
the hosts of Heaven have purposely done it. This is a quite childish
attitude and, as anyone can see, must lead to a lot of unnecessary
emotions. A weak being results, easily upset.
Now let us speak of internal considering in connection with
unnecessary emotions. Internal considering has its source in the
Emotional Centre in this sense—namely, that behind it there is always
a feeling, an emotion. It employs the Intellectual Centre in endless
words, inner talking and Writing pathetic letters never or rarely sent,
but at its root is a feeling, an emotion. What is this emotion that is
the source of internal considering? Let us speak of it gently, for all of
us, however grand or brave or hard-boiled we fancy ourselves, have
this emotion, this feeling, deep within us—unless, by some miracle, the
love of God has entered into our hearts and we have come to understand
that this Earth is a place of test, and that nothing human can understand us. Take the person who feels that it should not rain on his dear
birthday. It pours with rain. He considers. He feels sad. He feels
something does not appreciate him sufficiently, that, he is not rightly
treated, that something does not understand him. He was so looking
forward to it. This, in the Work, is called internal considering. As I
said, it is at bottom an emotion, a feeling, although the Intellectual
Centre is employed to voice it in millions of words, spoken or unspoken.
He puts on a bright face and says it does not matter. Yes—but inside
the feeling, the emotion, continues, and many other similar emotions
from similar experiences going far back into his past form a core in his
Emotional Centre, from which many other forms of internal considering branch out—as, for example, you just miss the bus and
somehow it is always like that, or just when you want to see her she
says she has to go and see her aunt, or you did want to see that play
and they took you to another, and so on. No one, of course, ever listens
to what you want. I speak in a trivial way on purpose, because the
subject of internal considering is very deep and a serious matter in
everyone—for somehow life is foreign to us. Indeed, it is so deep and
so serious that the whole range and power of esoteric teaching through
the ages, including the strength of teaching latent in the parables in
the Gospels—such as "The Prodigal Son"—has not been able to cure
Humanity of it. Indeed, Humanity, unless it begins to awaken from
sleep and reach the level of Conscious Man, can never be cured of it,
1116
But one man, one woman, may begin to cure themselves of it—by hard
work on themselves.
So we have to speak of unnecessary or avoidable internal considering.
Let us suppose a man does not see his own disloyalty, callousness and
malice. He has never observed himself. He does not see that people
dislike or avoid him for this reason. He can see no reason why everyone
does not adore him. He then fancies people unfairly do not like him.
They behave unfairly to him. So he has a grievance. This is internal
considering. A man with a grievance is a good example of internal
considering. He never externally considers—that is, puts himself into
the situation of other persons and realizes their difficulties. On the
contrary, he wishes to put everyone he talks to into his situation, to
make them realize his difficulties—and a very boring experience it is
to hear them, especially if you are a doctor and are forced to listen to
him. Now this word unfair is, I think, a favourite word in internal
considering. Do you see it yourself? Do you not secretly think that
everything is unfair? If so, you have an admirable source of continual
internal considering, and will lose force every minute of the day. I
mean, each day will be a failure from the Work point of view. On the
other hand, if you observe your typical forms of internal considering
and do not identify with them and remember yourself, you will realize
that only you can help yourself, and all this internal considering and sense
of unfairness is useless and worse and can only give rise to daily emotions
which are unnecessary. But let no-one think he or she is free from
internal considering.
Internal considering on one side is defined as making internal
accounts against others. You have done a job of work and feel that
others have not done a similar job. So you start internal considering
—though you may not express it in spoken words. Others do not have
to work as you have to. Others do not see what you have done. No one
appreciates you—and so on. All this arises from not doing what you
have to do from yourself—not you yourself willing what you have to do.
Whatever you have to do, will to do it and you will get through the job
without becoming negative and so without being tired and without
making internal accounts. We have to be reminded of this constantly
—and you all are reminded of it constantly, for it is one of the secrets
of right work on oneself. Not only that: it makes force in you. Perhaps
nothing destroys one's understanding of the Work as much as internal
considering, this making of inner accounts against others with all the
resulting self-pity and damp, negative states, which, as it were, turn
one's whole psychological country into marshland filled with venomous
mosquitoes.
Now, if I will to do what I have to do, I will not make inner accounts
against others. But if I do what I have to do and all the time think that
someone else should do it and that it is unfair that I should have to
do it, then I am making internal accounts. That is, I am internally
considering. And this will give rise to endless inner talking in myself—
1117
a sort of inner muttering and complaining and brooding, that will go
on and on by itself, for the sign of the negative part of Emotional Centre
working is that it all goes on and on by itself—a sort of perpetual secret
grievance that may spread over and darken all one's inner life. We
know that we have to protect our outer life—our bodies—from assault.
Yet, even more important, we have to protect our inner psychological
life—our psychological body—from assault—and a much more dangerous form of assault. For a man may preserve his outer physical life
but not have any idea that he has to protect his inner psychological life.
So he gets narrow, hard, sour, stiff, bitter, revengeful, jealous, moody,
tiresome, and so on. In other words, he lives in his body, but is dead
inwardly in himself. However his body may appear, the Work will
say: "This body is alive, but he himself is internally a failure and is
dead. He is a walking dead man." All this, of course, applies to women
as well. How many dead, Mr. Ouspensky said, walk the streets.
So it is necessary to observe internal considering and notice what it
is and try to control it. This will lead to psychological health. Notice
your inner talking. Notice what obsesses your thoughts. Taste it and
see whether it is negative. Try to struggle with it. Hate it. Try to
wake up and do what you have to do from yourself willingly. Only one
person can live your life and that is yourself. But are you on the box
of your own carriage and have you reins? Otherwise you cannot will
anything.
You all probably have heard that extraordinary esoteric remark
attributed to Christ: "Resist not evil". It has many remarkable
meanings. One is to will what you think evil, what you think you
dislike, what you think should not be. You think you may die. Will
it—and you will no longer be afraid. To object to everything is easy.
To will what you object to is another thing. If you object to everything
you will internally consider all day. You will make internal accounts
against everyone. But if you will the existence of someone you object
to, everything will change—miraculously. If you will what happens to
you, you will gain force. If you object to what happens to you, you will
lose force. This Work is about how to gain force.
*
*
*
Part II.—You have heard many times that this Work is Esoteric
Christianity. Exoteric Christianity—belonging to different sects and
rituals and so on—is one thing. Esoteric Christianity connects with all
former esoteric teaching and is about the inner meaning of fragments
handed on to us, so inadequately, of the teaching of a Conscious Man
who taught some 2,000 years ago. Christ was No. 8 Man. But we have
very little reported of what He taught and most of what we have in the
Gospels is by people who never knew Christ and no doubt added or
distorted things, to fit their own views.
Now there is a parable preserved in one Gospel only about internal
1118
considering and how to prevent it, starting on oneself. All internal considering arises chiefly from False Personality in people more than anything else. Christ attacked the Pharisee and so on—and the Pharisee
who "did all things to be seen of men" is not one of a group of people
who lived centuries ago but something in yourself, now—in you, now—
that is, the Pharisee in you that pretends to be what he really is not at
heart. To realize one is almost nothing is to overcome the False
Personality, the Pharisee. Now the False Personality blows us up into
an enormous self-importance—like that frog in the fairy-story that
finally burst. It is this overvaluing of ourselves that causes a lot of
internal considering. The disciples of Christ ask: "Increase our faith".
Now faith is a force—force to believe beyond the evidence of the senses,
force to lift one above one's mechanical reactions, force to understand
that there is something above one's limited human understanding, force
to do this Work. Christ answers this question of how to increase one's
force to understand above one's merely natural understanding by a
parable:
"And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. And
the Lord said, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye would
say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou rooted up, and be thou
planted in the sea; and it would have obeyed you. But who is
there of you, having a servant plowing or keeping sheep, that will
say unto him, when he is come in from the field, Come straightway
and sit down to meat; and will not rather say unto him, Make
ready therewith I may sup, and gird thyself and serve me, till I
have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?
Doth he thank the servant because he did the things that were
commanded? Even so, ye also, when ye shall have done all the
things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants;
we have done that which it was our duty to do."
(Luke XVII 5-9)
Now notice that it would be quite possible for the servant to make
internal accounts—such as "Why should I have to work all day and
then serve you who have not had a hard day as I have?"
1119
Great Amwell House, February 7, 1948
COMMENTARY ON BEING
WORK-IDEA
The Work says that a man is not his size or his strength or
position or wealth. It says that a man is his understanding. There are
two sides to him in this respect—the side of his Knowledge and the side
of his Being. According to their development, this forms the man's
understanding. A man with great knowledge and bad being will understand very little or nothing and misunderstand very much. A man with
poor knowledge and good being will again understand little but he will
understand what he knows. Theoretically, full development of Knowledge and full development of Being will give the fullest possible
understanding. Man can have many other things belonging to this
subject. To-day I will make some commentaries on Being.
COMMENTARY
In a recent question it was asked: "Can Essence be related to Being?
Would it be correct to say that Essence is the part of our Being which
can be developed?" From a general point of view the Being of a
mechanical man is all that he is—that is, his False Personality, his
Imaginary 'I', his acquired Personality, with all his different contradictory 'I's, his attitudes, prejudices, etc., and his undeveloped childEssence. In reference to being many 'I's or "egos" the Work therefore
says that the Being of a mechanical man is characterized by multiplicity.
He is a many, not a one—but he imagines he is one and the same all
the time and this illusion is produced by Imaginary 'I' which blinds
him. This is the state of Being of mechanical man. It is not real Being,
A conscious man has real Being. Let us examine the point. In what
sense, that we can grasp, is the Being of a conscious man different from
that of a mechanical man? In mechanical man—that is, in every one
of us as we are—there is an absence of unity. As was just said, the Being
of a mechanical man—that is, the Being of ourselves—is characterized
by a multiplicity of different 'I's. But we do not notice it. We imagine
we are a single 'I'. We say "I think", "I feel", "I wish", and so on,
believing that it is the same 'I' all the time that is acting in us. But we
are quite mistaken. It is merely imagination. We imagine we have one
permanent, unvarying 'I' that acts in us and from this illusion springs
the further illusion that we are unchanging and are conscious of
all we think and say and do and feel. Yes—and this Imaginary 'I'
dwells in the house of False Personality which in turn is built of
imagination. This is an absurd yet extremely powerful form of
hypnotism acting on us which sincere, uncritical observation will begin
to weaken. If so, we are then beginning to awaken to a small extent
1120
and as a result our general feeling of ourselves, our feeling of 'I' and
our relationship to ourselves and others, will begin to alter. By
weakening a fixed idea about ourselves, we have made a little room
to change in. But, however absurd, this form of hypnotism is so powerful that it is comparatively rare for anyone to awaken from it. People
simply will not see that it is true of themselves. They will not awaken
from sleep. So they live their lives with the wrong feeling of 'I'. They
cannot for a moment grasp that Man is kept asleep by different forms
of hypnotism for purposes that are of no advantage to him. In any case,
they are sure they are awake and fully conscious. As was said, even
though they quarrel all day long, the realization that one has many
different and contradictory 'I's and not one real, permanent 'I' is a
step towards awakening. Why? Because a man can no longer live in
the illusion produced by Imaginary 'I' that he is one, a unity, an
unvarying, constant and consistent individual. Reflect, some of you,
on how a man can be an angel in public and a devil at home. Would
you call that a sign that he has one permanent, real, unvarying,
constant and consistent 'I'? Does it not mean that he has public 'I's
and domestic 'I's, totally contradictory? And he has many other 'I's
as well. But he imagines he has only one 'I'—fully conscious—that
controls him. Is it not rather ridiculous that even quite intelligent
people cannot—or cannot bear to—realize that this 'I' they attribute
to their Being is entirely imaginary? As I said, it is an absurd illusion
but one of tremendous power and few ever escape from it. One reason
is that it deprives one of one's vanity to no small extent to realize that
it is true. But one has to see it for oneself. To be told it is infuriating.
So the Work starts with self-observation. It says in so many words:
"Well, see it for yourself. Observe in yourself that it is so. It is none
of my business to shew you it is true. You have to see the truth of it
for yourself. You are not one but many."
Now we understand that the possibility of attaining unity, of
reaching one permanent 'I', is latent in Man and that Man was created
as a self-developing organism to attain to Real 'I' in himself and
because he has not attained it he is never at peace within himself but
always uneasy. To attain this secret goal hidden in him he must begin
a long way off by discarding many illusions, many unreal things, one
of which is that he already possesses this 'I'. In the case of this illusion
he must begin to see the stark truth that he is many and not one and
that in a sense there is no such person as himself but something unreal
made up of a lot of people that use his name, that he takes as himself.
Now in the case of Conscious Man, the position is different. The
Being of Conscious Man is characterized by unity—-by the possession
of Real 'I'. So his Being is quite different from our Being. He has real
Being in comparison to our Being. A conscious man, because he has
real Being, can do. Having unity, having Real 'I', he has one will, and,
having one will, he can do. In our case, having many different 'I's in
our Being, we have not one will, but many wills. Each 'I' has its own
1121
will and each 'I' wills what it wants and what one 'I' wants is different
from what another 'I' wants. Having therefore no Real Will because
we possess no Real 'I', a mechanical man cannot do. It appears as if he
can do. But circumstances and training acting on him make him do
as he does. He cannot help doing what he does. It is mechanical. It
is only when he tries to go against his mechanicalness that he will begin
to realize its enormous strength. In a conversation with Gurdjieff a
question was asked by Ouspensky about what he could do. Gurdjieff
said: "You can do nothing. In order to do a man must be." I have often
reflected on this remark which, like everything Gurdjieff said, is strange,
brief, and arresting. In order to do a man must first be.
From all this you will see that Being in the Work-sense seems to
refer to developed Man—I mean, Real Being. We have Being as we
are, but it is confused Being, which shifts and alters every moment.
Gurdjieff compared the state of mechanical man's being to a glass retort
filled with different metallic powders. He said: "At every tap the
powders shift. This is what Man is like. Every change of life, of
circumstances, every event, every situation, every mood, taps the retort,
and the powders move. It is then necessary to put a fire under the
retort until the metallic powders melt and fuse together and become
one."
Now for this to begin to happen a man, a woman, must crave Being.
Imagining they have real Being will not help. In fact, since imagination
always can satisfy all our lack, it prevents us, in this case, from seeing
that we have no real Being. But a sincere and scrupulous self-observation
begins to shew us that we are nobody—nothing—just a confusion of
things, inwardly, however our facade may suggest to others that we are
something definite—and even suggest to us that we are something
definite. But since Real 'I' exists in us, we can touch it under very
exceptional conditions. Then we know what it would be like to have
Real Being. As you have heard, sometimes under great and prolonged
stress, under danger, under illness, under great fatigue and other things,
a man touches Real 'I' in himself. Then everything is changed. Fear
leaves him. Anxiety leaves him. Inner uneasiness leaves him. For the
moment he has touched his goal. His whole feeling of 'I' is transformed.
He is no longer himself as he was conscious of himself, but another
person—an entirely new person. Everything false, unreal, invalid,
vanishes. But we, as we are, have to work for long against everything
false, unreal and invented, to reach this state permanently. That is,
payment is demanded. Now one of the first payments in this sense is
to realize that you are not one but many. This needs work on oneself.
Do you, from this example, begin to see what payment means in the
Work?
1122
Great Amwell House, February 14, 1948
COMMENTARY ON HABITS
WORK-IDEA.
The Work says we must think in a new way to begin to
change ourselves. The Work teaches that after a certain age we are
nothing but a mass of acquired habits in every centre—habits in
Thinking Centre, habits in Emotional Centre, habits in Sex Centre,
habits in Moving Centre and habits in Instinctive Centre. All these
habits keep us asleep because the centres cannot work and so we pass
our existences not as we like, but as these habits dictate, and wonder
why our lives are not what we expected. We do not even realize that
they are habits. We are these habits, without seeing or knowing that
this is the case. At the same time everyone is quite sure that they could
easily change, if they wish to. This form of imagination assists, like all
other forms of imagination, in keeping us asleep. Now if our centres
were not overlaid by these habits, we would hear what they say to us
about every occasion. But, as we are, centres do not speak to us.
COMMENTARY
The above was said originally in connection with the necessity of
studying the construction of ourselves. We have to learn something
about our machinery—in this case our habits. But, of course, we do
not believe we have a machinery. People usually think that habits
only refer to minor bodily habits. They do not understand that their
Intellectual Centre—what they think by—is full of mechanical habits,
and that their feelings, emotions, which belong to Emotional Centre,
are also mechanical habits of feeling, habits of emotion. In other words,
the Intellectual Centre and Emotional Centre are not awake, but
overspread by habits.
Let us take the Intellectual Centre. Most people do not think but
have opinions they have heard. These opinions can become habitual
—that is, habits of the mind. Now if a man, a woman, begins to awaken
a little and sees the necessity of thinking for themselves, they will find
that there are so many acquired and borrowed opinions and traditions
filling their Thinking Centre that they have absolutely no idea how to
begin to think. And, of course, for the purposes of Nature, which Man
asleep serves the world over, it is contrary to Nature's interest that
anyone should really think. I suppose that if an animal began to think
—say, a horse—a lot of trouble would start, quite apart from the
trouble I have always had in connection with horses. But just consider
if animals could really think. And also conceive if we all could really
think for ourselves instead of following opinions, slogans, prejudices,
traditions, catch-phrases, and even the last thing we read. Why, if
1123
we all could really think for ourselves, purely, we could live in a new
world. But, as we are, we think from acquired opinions, borrowed ideas,
from what we have been taught is right, and so on, according to our
upbringing, our class, our education, our inner hatreds, jealousies and
revenges. Now, as Gurdjieff said once: "Such a man does not think.
It thinks—not he himself. And so he lives and dies without ever having
thought." In another connection he said: "We must try to awaken
the Intellectual Centre first of all. That is, it is necessary to begin to
think for oneself. This Work is to make a man, a woman, think—and
think in a quite new way." And on many occasions, Ouspensky said,
in so many words: "Why ask me always what, say, is exactly the
difference between self-observation and Self-Remembering? It is not
for me to explain. You must see for yourselves. Try to observe—
try to remember yourselves. You must begin to think for yourselves.
This Work is to make you think—think what you are, think what
you want, think indeed why you exist at all. Only by beginning
to think can you change your life. Do you want your life to repeat
itself just as it is? If so, do not above all even try to think. Just go
on with your opinions. But then everything will recur just as it has
happened already and you will have to repeat your life exactly as
before."
Now this interested me very much. I had up to then believed that
to change anything in oneself it was necessary to give up this or that
physical habit such as smoking and so on. I had never realized that in
order to change anything in oneself one has to begin to think in a new
way and that unless there were some change in thinking, nothing else
could be changed in oneself. That is, one had to start at the top—in the
mind—before anything else could alter. So to-night I am going to try
to shew you what this means. It is so very important an idea in this
Work and also in fact in all esoteric teaching, as in the Gospels. Understand, then, that one cannot change oneself unless the mind changes.
As long as you have the same mental attitudes, prejudices, opinions, and
so on, you cannot begin to change—try as you like—and you will
remain the same, unless your whole point of view, your whole way of
thinking, changes first. "To change", Ouspensky said, "you must
change your attitudes first."
Now let us speak first of what is said about the key to self-change in
that extraordinary production called the Gospels. Notice how the whole
idea of self-change, inner self-evolution, begins with one magical word.
This word in the Greek is μετάνοια. Many have heard me speak of this
word in connection with the Work and I do not think that what was
said can be repeated enough. The introductory word to the Gospels
and all their inner psychological teaching is this word μετάνοια which
is wrongly translated as "Repent" and which really means "change your
mind". In other words, it means "Think in a new way". μετά =
beyond: and νους = mind. So the word μετάνοια means "think beyond
your mind" and that is equivalent to what this Work, which is Esoteric
1124
Christianity, indicates when it teaches that in order to change we must
think in a new way. That strange figure, John the Baptist, clad in
skins, of whom Christ said that the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is
greater than he—but that of men born of women he was the greatest—
this strange figure taught two things in conjunction—"Repent—for the
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand", which truly should be "Change your
ways of thinking"—yes, but why? "Because the Kingdom of Heaven
is at hand". What does that signify? It signifies the same as what
the Work teaches. Can you find the parallel? Of course you can. What
does the Work teach about Man? It says Man is not the same. Many
different kinds and degrees of Man exist, No. 1, No. 2, No. 3—that is,
Moving-Instinctive Man, Emotional Man, Intellectual Man. These, the
Work says, are mechanical men who will never understand each other
and so form the Circle of Confusion of Tongues, or Babel. It then speaks
of higher categories of Man—No. 4 Man—that is, a man in whom all
centres work so that he is not a one-sided man as, say, is a Moving
Centre Man. Then it speaks of the Circle of Conscious Humanity—
No. 5 Man, No. 6 Man and No. 7 Man. These form the "Kingdom
of Heaven". From this example you will see that the Work-teaching
about different categories of Man makes you think in a new way—that is,
if you understand the teaching. And if you have patience to follow me,
you will see that the message of John the Baptist, the herald of the
teaching of Christ, is the same message as this Work gives: namely,
"Think in a new way" and "The Circle of Conscious Humanity exists"
—that is, the Kingdom of Heaven. Nowadays people wish to make
Heaven on Earth. One must look around and consider what is
happening. "For mankind to change, for a better state of things, each
man, each woman, must begin to work on themselves and try to awaken
from sleep." In such words did Gurdjieff many times indicate the
conditions necessary for things to become better on this deep-down and
unimportant planet. As it is, everything happens in the only way it
can happen. It looks as if Man were doing. But only a Conscious Man
can do. So everything happens in the only way it can happen. In this
case, the theory of Determinism is right. But since a man can change
and become a balanced man or even a Conscious Man, then, through
his individual work, through his changing himself, others can change
—and then things will not happen in the only way they can happen.
One man, by work on himself, can change others—and others change
others, and so on. But if all people are asleep, if no one understands
what to do to change themselves, then all things will go on in the only
way they can do—deterministically.
Now to return to the Thinking Centre or Intellectual Centre, and
to the question of thinking in a new way. When we hear that there
are higher men, we reflect. When we hear that Man was created—and
created as an experiment in self-evolution—we reflect. When we hear
that life on this planet is not in our interests unless we try to awaken,
we reflect. When we hear that we are mechanical people and belong
1125
to the Circle of Babel we reflect. When we hear that unless we change
ourselves, everything will remain the same, we reflect. When we hear
that our level of Being attracts our life, we reflect. When we hear
that if we remain as we are, everything will repeat itself just as it did
before, we reflect. Do you, for instance, want to live the same life
over and over again? The Work says if you change nothing in yourself,
your life will endlessly repeat. When you hear that on having any
mental contact with the Work and trying to make out for yourself what
it is about, and so altering your previous so-called thinking, you may
begin to alter your position in the totality of things—you reflect. To
reflect means to bend your thinking back to yourself. Consider your
life, do you want things different or do you want the recurrence of
the same things ? Everything repeats—as winter and summer. If you
remain the same, you will experience the same. Surely you can see this
from day to day. But the Work says it refers also to life after life—
because everything is as a circle, and everything repeats. Now when
you begin to reflect in this way, you begin to think for yourself—and
this is the starting-point of self-change. You begin to become responsible
for what you are. You begin to see that if you make no effort to change
something of yourself everything will repeat—day by day—and life by
life. Have you ever seen a propaganda child? You cannot change it.
It has fixed ideas. If one reflects on this one begins to think in a new
way—that is, one begins to think for oneself. Unless you yourself work
on yourself you will have the same, over and over again. Do you wish
this? I would say, in my case, No. Then what can possibly aid me?
If I still internally consider, if I still submit myself to negative states
without any struggle, if I identify with everything, with every thought
and mood, then I certainly do not understand my life and its meaning
on this Earth. So I add, reflect on what this Work teaches because
only by reflecting privately will it enter your mind and alter your mind
and that—this thinking in a new way—opens to each of you the
possibility of changing your Being. Retain the same mental attitudes,
the same prejudices, the same unchallenged viewpoints, the same fixed
ideas and opinions, and you cannot change anything in yourself. The mind
must first change. Hence it is said μετάνοια is the starting-point. That
is, change of mind must come before you can become a different man,
a different woman.
Now all this talk is about Intellectual Centre and changing it, for
the Work teaches that unless you begin to think in a new way you can
alter nothing and everything will go as before. This Work, intellectually,
gives you the right thoughts and ideas that can connect you with Higher
Centres—that is, make you receptive of another permanent ancient
order of truth. But do not for a moment think that that is all. You must
begin to have not only right thinking, right knowledge, but right Being.
What is right Being? Being is different from truth. Being is just like
this: Good = good will. Will belongs to Being. What is charity?
Charity in the Greek = grace—graciousness. In the Gospel of John
1126
it is said of Christ: "And we beheld him full of grace and truth."
Notice grace comes first. Just take your fanatical truth-people and
reflect.
Great Amwell House, February 21, 1948
COMMENTARY ON TIME
WORK-IDEAS.
(1) Centres work at different speeds.
(2) On one occasion Ouspensky asked Gurdjieff: "What is Time?"
Gurdjieff replied: "Time is Breath".
COMMENTARY
Part I.—This Commentary is on some of the ideas about Time in the
Work. We will begin with the question of speed in different centres.
The centres in Man do not work at the same speed. What can be
understood by the term "speed of centres"? Take this example: If you
were to think how to move while running downstairs, you would
probably fall. Why? Because your thinking would be slower than your
movement. Again, if you have to think how to drive your car, you will
probably have an accident. Why? Because when you know how to
drive your car you scarcely think how to drive it. What, then, takes
charge of you when you run downstairs or drive a car? The Moving
Centre. Its mind is working. The speed of this centre outstrips the
speed of our ordinary thinking and by this I mean our Formatory Centre
which is one part of the Intellectual Centre—the slowest part. I am
not speaking of Emotional Thinking, for example, which is far quicker,
and is comparable to what people call intuition.
Now we understand that a slow person takes in things slowly and
a quick person quickly. The slow person takes things in one at a time:
the quicker person takes in two things together. The latter can see
connections between things that the slower person does not see. Some
people like to say: "One thing at a time" and think it is a good, sound
maxim. They like to get one thing finished first before they go on to
the next. Having, say, deployed their troops laboriously on the right
flank, they are astonished to find that the enemy has been massing his
guns opposite them all the while. They cannot think in terms of second
or opposing force, but only in terms of what they wish to do.
Now what is quicker means what is more comprehensive. We all
perhaps have had flashes of another consciousness in which we saw
many things altogether. We can be sure that this is due to the working
1127
of some part of a centre that has a higher rate of speed and sees "all
together". Now when a centre is working whose speed is great, we
experience the paradox of everything going very slowly and also of
everything going in a flash. Sometimes our lives appear in this double
way and I would say they always do. When, for example, we are in a
car accident, we may become conscious in Moving Centre. This centre
works 30,000 times more quickly than does the ordinary part of
Intellectual Centre that we use. We then see everything as if in slow
motion. Why? Because we are taking in far more impressions. The
rate of perception, when we are momentarily conscious in Moving
Centre, is enormously increased in the ratio of 1 to 30,000, ideally
speaking, or at least something similar. You know if you take a cinema
film of a jumping horse-race and expose, say, only six pictures a second,
on the screen, the horses will go like lightning and violently. The
normal rate is, say, 24. Now if you expose, say, 40 pictures a second,
on the screen, the horses seem to sail slowly over jumps without effort,
without violence—in fact, you will get the impression that they are not
doing anything, but that the medium they are in is doing it, as if it
formed vacuums and pressures that drew them up or pushed them
down. Now when we become momentarily conscious in a centre, or
part of one, that works at a higher rate of speed, we see things in slow
motion. We take more photographs per second. It may seem endless
time before our car hits the other car. And yet it may seem all over
in a flash. Yes—to our ordinary centres it all took half a second. But
to a centre working at a higher speed, that half-second became expanded
enormously and so it seemed a long time before the crash came. This
double experience of "time" has always interested me.
Let us now take the Emotional Centre. This centre can see many
things together if it is really working and can draw so much together
and connect it into a whole that it seems like clairvoyance. But since
the Emotional Centre is drenched with negative emotions and personal
self-emotions it rarely can perform its proper task and usually only
makes us ill. If you can grasp that a higher speed of working of a centre
means expanded time and a lower speed of working means contracted time
it may help you to realize that our experience of "time" is relative to our
state. You can, for instance, imagine a vast musical composition
contracted down for small, poor orchestras—and then expanded to its
fulness, when all its inner octaves and variations and subtleties are
heard. So are our lives in small parts of centres. There are many
recorded experiences, going far back in literature, of people experiencing
a change of time, in the sense of expanded time. For example, they have
believed they have been in some place, some other level of life for days,
or years, and yet, falling down into the ordinary time-rate, have found
it only a few seconds. Each second of our time contains many other
scales of time. The Higher Centres in Man work at enormous rates
compared with the Formatory Centre, which works most slowly of all
centres and parts of centres in Man. Seen from Higher Centres the
1128
whole of one's life can be a moment. Yes—but also, paradoxically,
each moment of your life can become a life.
In dreams time obviously varies. Dreams are of many kinds and
come from different centres. Some long dreams take only a few seconds
of clock-time. So one begins to see that psychic or inner time is different
from solar or clock-time—or, to speak clumsily, physical, or outer time.
The visible or outer surface of our bodies is in physical time which does
not vary and goes at the same rate for all, although I have wondered
if it does, because there seems so much "time" on one day and so little
on another. Still, if some kind of time did not go in the same way for all,
it would be awkward, as we might keep suddenly appearing or disappearing. So our bodies remain in one time. Our mental life,
thoughts, feelings, in short, our inner psychic life, can experience many
rates of time. Now each centre is a mind of a special kind, related to
one aspect of life, and each centre has its speed—and again each part
of a centre is a sub-mind and has its speed. You have heard that each
centre works with its own energy or "petrol". These different energymatters in the Work are called Hydrogens. Formatory Part of Intellectual Centre, in which our Consciousness usually dwells, works with
Hydrogen 48, and this is a very slow centre and a heavy petrol. Emotional
Centre should work with "petrol" or energy of half the density—namely, Hydrogen 24. If it does, it can theoretically work 30,000 times
more quickly than Formatory Centre at its fullest extent. But usually
it works with a denser petrol. Even so, you can observe the quickness
of Emotional Centre in negative states, in jealousy, suspicion, etc. Sex
Centre should work with Hydrogen 12 but rarely does, usually using 48.
Moving Centre should work with 24 and may do in moments of danger
—or, reversely, stops working, so to speak, in the paralysis of fear.
Practice can make it use its proper Hydrogen—as in the long training
of jugglers, where movements are quicker than the mind behind
your eye can follow. The two Higher Centres work with Hydrogens 12
and 6. If we were conscious in either of them—if one or the other were
behind the eye—the movements of a juggler would appear extremely
slow, speaking from one angle. The denser the energy-material, the
slower the working. In the Absolute—at the summit of the Ray of
Creation—the finest energy, which might be called Hydrogen 1, penetrates and comprehends everything simultaneously. Its speed of work
is beyond all human comprehension. The speed of light, 130,000 odd
miles a second, is very, very slow motion by comparison.
Part II.—In answer to Ouspensky's question: "What is Time?"
Gurdjieff replied: "Time is Breath". What can this possibly mean?
We can however with some reflection realize that living things do not
breathe at the same rate. We cannot, for instance, imagine that a
minute organism, such as an amoeba, a minute living cell, takes three
seconds to inspire and express air. Now the time of Man's breathing is
about three seconds. He breathes in and out—that is, his complete
cycle of breathing is roughly about twenty to the minute. In
1129
pneumonia, when the intake of oxygen is impaired by the affected
consolidated parts of the lungs, he has to breathe more rapidly, when
more oxygen is required. Yet he has an average "time of breath"
of three seconds.
Mr. Ouspensky made out, at Gurdjieff's suggestion, a "Table of
Time" in regard to this idea—namely, that Time is Breath. But first
we must understand that when Gurdjieff said: "Time is Breath", he
shewed that by the sort of Time Man lives in he means his relation to
Time. We have already seen that Time is different in different centres.
Mahomet saw a jar of water falling off the table. He went into a trance
and was in Paradise for a long time. When he fell asleep again—that
is, when he emerged into ordinary Time—the water had not yet reached
the floor. So he was in a different order of Time. Now the Earth is a
living thing from the Work standpoint and its Time is different from
our Time. Understand again that Time is different not only for different
centres, but for different classes of beings. The Time, say, of a cell, is
different from our Time. A cell lives from our view for a very short
time. Yet for itself it lives as long as we do.
Let us see briefly how the "Table of Time" deals with this difficult
idea. In this Table we have first of all the idea that Man can only take
in an impression that lasts for a certain time—in this case, for, roughly,
a ten-thousandth of a second. An electric spark, a flash of light, lasting
for one ten-thousandth of a second can just make an effect on his eye
—that is, on his retina. Something far quicker will make no impression.
It will not affect the machinery of the eye, being too quick for it. It
is the same with the ear, which only can take in vibrations of sound up
to a certain point. The next idea is Time is Breath. In the case of Man,
Breath, as was said, is roughly three seconds. Now comes in a curious
idea—called "Time of Waking and Sleeping". All organisms, minute
or great, have a time of sleep, a time of waking, and they are quite
different for different classes of Beings. Finally comes the "Time of
Life"—taken in the case of Man as roughly 80 years. Understand
that these figures are approximate. Now, if you will notice, the relation
between each degree is roughly 30,000. That is, 30,000 times one
ten-thousandth of a second—the "time of quickest reception of
impressions" in Man—is three seconds, which is Man's time of breath.
30,000 times three seconds is roughly his time of waking and sleeping
—namely, 24 hours—or, day and night. And 30,000 times day and
night is roughly 80 years—the time of his life.
Now to-night we will scarcely go further, save to say that the world
below Man—the world or cosmos of cells—of which Man is built up—
has a different "time" and the world or cosmos that Man lives in
—namely, Organic Life—has another "time" in comparison to Man.
Man is composed of cells—myriads of them. Man lives in Organic Life
on Earth. A cell compared to Man is as zero to infinity. A man in
regard to all the living Organic Life on Earth—plants, fishes, birds,
animals, etc.—is again a mere dot—and so as zero to infinity. Later
1130
on, more will be said of this. Notice that to Organic Life a man is
unimportant and that to a man a single cell in his body is unimportant.
Now you may ask: "What is the use of all this- -it only complicates
everything?" Our trouble is that we suffer from a wrong feeling of 'I'.
Now this Work is all about reaching a different feeling of 'I'. One
way
of doing this is to realize generally, from your inner understanding and
not from your False Personality pretending to be modest, that we are
very small in the Totality of things. This emotional perception purifies
the Emotional Centre. Why? Ah, well, think—reflect—for yourselves.
The Work says: "We must realize our nothingness." Yes, not artificially,
but in a real sense. This drains the Emotional Centre of self-emotions
and so opens it to another order of influences—namely, Higher Centres
—which are fully formed and work in us continually—only we cannot
hear what they say—being what we are. These big cosmic diagrams
can help us to realize our position on this Earth and our state of Being.
The Table of Time in the Different Cosmoses
1131
Great Amwell House, February 28, 1948
COMMENTARY ON IMAGINARY 'I'
AND FALSE PERSONALITY
WORK-IDEA.
The Work says that if you want things different you must
change yourself. Man is in Imaginary 'I' and False Personality. As
long as he is in this inner situation he cannot develop internally and so
everything will remain as before. He will attract the same life. Man
has a wrong relation to himself. He lives in the basement of himself
and so cannot reach his right life.
COMMENTARY
At a recent meeting here I spoke about Imaginary 'I' and False
Personality from the point of view that unless this inner situation begins
to alter, nothing can alter. This means that you will always attract the
same life, the same experiences, the same disappointments, the same
sense of frustration, the same boredom, the same internally unsatisfactory existences and so on. The Work says: "Change yourself and
your life will change. Remain the same in yourself and everything in
your life will remain the same and repeat itself". It is always worth
while for a person to remind herself or himself of this central idea of the
Work. Remain the same, as regards your Being, and you can only
attract the same things that hitherto you have attracted. Understand
that if you remain the same in your Being, in the kind of person you are,
you cannot possibly have anything different. Change your Being—and
your life will change. Do nothing to change yourself, and your life
will—and inevitably must remain the same. Suppose some prominent
feature in you centres in being lazy in regard to what you could be
good at and you make any efforts but the right one. Remain lazy and
your life will be the same. Suppose you are mean (to yourself or to
others—as thinking meanly of others)—remain mean, and your life
will be the same. You have no charity. Suppose you are a confirmed
liar (to yourself and to others)—remain a liar and your life will remain
the same. Begin to change yourself—and your life will instantly change.
It is possible to understand that if one remains the p